From the countryside they again questioned the depreciation of the dollar, which deepened in the last month.
He President of the Rural Association of Uruguay (ARU), Patricio Cortabarría, demanded from the government a correction of the exchange rate delay, noting that “there is a loss of competitiveness only with China 28%.
This is how he referred to the present dollar, which closed on Friday in 37,408 pesos and accumulated the largest monthly drop in 16 months in June, in a context where the price fell for the 15th time. Real Effective Exchange Rate on a year-over-year basis.
Cortabarría pointed out in dialogue with Crónicas Económicas that the The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and the Central Bank “focused on controlling inflation”, but he questioned that this measure “is harming the entire export sector and the entire tradable sector, which are the private sector and job creators.”
For the president of the ARU, it is a type of policy that “In the long term, all they do is deteriorate economic conditions of the country and lose competitiveness in front of our most important markets”, to which he spoke of “a loss of competitiveness only with China of 28%”.
Thus, he questioned the exchange rate delay in the country, which some specialists estimate in up to 25%, just like you did recently the director of Ceres, Ignacio Munyo. In turn, he analyzed that there will be no correction this year and agreed with the ARU’s claim that the government should reassign some of its goals to appreciate the dollar.
Losses in agriculture due to drought
Regarding the possible consequences in agriculture, he warned: “If we break the productive machine, in the future the only thing that will be left for us will be unemployment and lack of investment. The Uruguayan business community is going to suffer a lot”.
The impact of the worst drought of the century was felt in the country and Cortabarría estimated the losses between 1,800 and 2,000 million pesos in the agricultural sector. To that he added a problem for the future: “There was a problem of delay in all the cattle cycles that is going to affect two or three years forward.”
Referring to the current situation, he thanked the rains.“It rained something and with that little in winter it is enough ”, admitted the referent of the field, while he expressed: “There are still some big rains to fill in cutwaters and dams.”
Source: Ambito
