The secretary of small and medium enterprises, Marcos Ayerraalong with Diego Leal and Javier Viqueiraauthorities of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), participated in the N°30 Industrial Conference of the organism. There, the Government official confirmed that they will present a bill with the spirit of the DNU that proposed a labor reform and was suspended by Justice.
“With the DNU we touched too many interests, that’s why it was suspended, but we realized that You can’t create jobs if you don’t go all out”. In this way, Ayerra confirmed to more than a thousand attendees that the Government will once again put on the table a labor reform based on the Decree of Necessity and Urgency 70/2023whose labor chapter suffered a judicial setback.
The project was announced by the Secretary of Production Coordination, Juan Pazo, and is called Investment and Employment Promotion Law. Yesterday, hours later, he added that it is an initiative that includes “all the measures studied by the Secretary of Labor, Julio Cordero” and is necessary for “a definitive structural change.”
“We come from an inflationary economy, of every man for himself, with poor ability to plan“, explained the official and stated: “The challenge is how to encourage more investmentsbecause they are linked to improved financing.”
Greater competitiveness, the challenge that worries the UIA
For its part, Loyal, 2nd pro treasurer of the UIA, He was optimistic about the official initiative: “not only is a regime needed for large investments, but also for small SMEs”, he opined. However, he was concerned about a problem that “all countries in the region share”: the Chinese advance on the local industry.
Along the same lines, he expressed ViqueiraSME vice president, when asking the official how the Government thinks “level the playing field with Brazil, China or the United States“, countries that will apply “industrial policies that will affect us”, in the face of the protectionist promise of the next American president, donald trump.
At the same time, he assured that the industry ““It has a social contribution and an economic cost” and added a second question: “What would happen if in towns far from urban centers, like Las Parejas, Santa Fe, there was no industry?? “Would the State come to their aid?”
For his part, Ayerra responded that the industry “has been behind for seventy years” and that competing “implies an order, to believe in ourselves”. “We are going to work to transform Argentina, The others are moving targets.”said the official in reference to the challenges presented by the external context.
In that sense, he assured that the Government “is looking for ways to improve the productivity of companies,” but he also noted that “It is also correct to think about the consumerwho wants to access better products at better prices.”
At the same time, he responded to the warnings from the industrial sector against the policy of opening up imports: “many speak of indiscriminate opening, but imports have fallen and final goods are 11% of imports”. “We want to make the adjustments quickly, which will never be perfect, but we are aligned with entrepreneurs generating jobs,” he concluded.
The keys to the investment and employment bill
The national Government will present this week a draft Investment and Employment Promotion Law. The project is structured in six chapters: Productive investments, incremental exports, agriculture, labor regime, employment promotion and other provisions.
The initiative will seek to complement the RIGI and is designed especially for medium-sized investments according to the capabilities of each of the business segments.
It includes, according to the Government draft, a labor chapter that maintains “many of the aspects included in DNU No. 70/2023” that suffered at least seven precautionary measures requested by the labor confederations and by different unions. Below are all the keys to the project that Pazo announced at the UIA:
PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENTS
- Accelerated amortization: reduction of asset depreciation periods in income tax
- Early VAT refund: reduction of deadlines, going from 6 to 3 months.
Productive Investment is considered to be those investments that exceed the following thresholds:
INCREMENTAL EXPORTS
- Export duty relief for MSMEs exporters of industrial goods on incremental exports (tariff positions to be determined).
- New companies excluded from the benefit.
AGRICULTURAL CHAPTER
- Property valuation: postponement of the valuation of the property at the time of the actual sale of the livestock. Until then, IIGG will be paid on the tax valuation.
- Investment in irrigation systems and anti-hail nets (accelerated amortization and early VAT refund)
- Reduction of the VAT rate to energy for agricultural irrigation systems (From 27% to 10.5%)
LABOR CHAPTER
- Job update -Employment Contract Law: modernization of the regime incorporating many of the aspects included in DNU No. 70/23
- Agricultural Work Regime: modernization of the regime and adaptation to the LCT
PROMOTION OF EMPLOYMENT
- Incremental jobs: Tax credit bonus on a percentage of the sums paid as employer contributions to the SIPA for new incremental jobs and for a period of 1 year
- Tax credit bonus on the sums paid as employer contributions to the SIPA for the hiring of workers in the National, Provincial and Municipal Public Sector, for a period of 2 years. The hiring of public officials is excluded from the benefit.
OTHER PROVISIONS
- Garment: Regime update, 100% digital and remote.
- Repeal of Promotion Regimes (Modern Biotechnology and National Program to Support Young Entrepreneurship)
Source: Ambito
