Gustavo Idígoras, president of CIARA-CEC, assured that he asked the president-elect to quickly eliminate taxes, access to foreign currency and limits on shipments of some grains.
The grain trade in Argentina is “paralyzed” due to lack of merchandise due to a historic drought since farmers are not doing transactionsanticipating a rise in the exchange rate with the elected president Javier Milei. This was confirmed Gustavo Idigoras, President of CIARA-CEC, in an interview with Reuters.
The comments are the first of their kind from the CIARA-CEC chamber of grain exporters and processors, which represents aiimportant agro-exporters like Cargill and Bunge. Argentina is normally the main global supplier of soybean oil and meal, and the third largest supplier of corn.
“Today the grain trade is paralyzed by the grain shortage, the hardest in 60 years, secondly by an expectation of the triumph of Milei that there is one prompt update of the official exchange rate“said Gustavo Idígoras, president of CIARA-CEC, in an interview with Reuters.
Agroexporters: what is the situation of the sector
Idígoras said that the shortage of beans for the huge processing plants located on the banks of the Paraná River, which transform soybeans into their derived oil and flour, means that many are operating at extremely low levels.
“Today we are in 73% average idle capacity in the crushing plants and 75% of idle capacity in the grain port capacity,” he explained. “We are going through the worst year and the worst quarter in history.”
He added that the plants were rescheduling technical shutdowns due to the “impossibility” of continuing to grind soybeans.
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“Most of them are already activating these technical stops in many production lines. There will be very few active production lines left in the coming months,” he explained.
Idígoras asked the next Milei government to quickly remove restrictions at grain exportsincluding taxes, access to foreign currency and limits on shipments of some grains.
“Milei’s government must be the government that has the greatest export orientation in historyan aggressive export policy and for that we must first eliminate all restrictions on day one,” he concluded.
Source: Ambito
