Bureaucratic obstacles in production make the country more expensive, warn the Chamber of Commerce

— What was your assessment of the wage guidelines for collective bargaining proposed by the government?

The alignments are positive. that they have sent us. We understand that what is happening today is being fulfilled in reality, it is even being contemplated that there are sectors that are still being or have been greatly affected by the pandemic. The objective continues to be the recovery of real wages, which I think is something that we all agree on and it is a reality.

But since we are not all in the same conditions, we understand that what the government has proposed is that it can be accomplished in stages.

— For businessmen, the conclusion was favourable, do you think that this will also be the case in the rest of the sectors?

I think it is a negotiation, that we have to understand where we came from, what has happened to us, because in the middle, unfortunately, the pandemic ended and everything is over.

After the pandemic we had high inflationary costs worldwide, which had a very strong impact. Then we had the topic of Russia-Ukraine war that impacted inflation. And then we had the drought, which is very big and has hit the country very hard. We are also suffering the difference with the Argentina.

So that’s hitting all the activity, there are areas of the country that have been greatly affected. The good thing is that we begin to see different things and that everything is no longer the same.

— Should there be differential policies with the situation of those departments affected by the exchange rate situation?

I think you have to sit down and talk and see that they are different situations, so you have to handle them as such. What are the measures? Well, the measurements have to sit down and study them. Listen well to the departments, know what proposals they may have and I think that is the path we are on today. But that already indicates a big step. I think now today we are not all equal within the same. So we have to start looking at it.

— Is the exchange rate delay still a problem?

Yeah, exchange rate delay is a problem. It is a reality, it is a problem. It affects the system, our products that are exported.

If Uruguay can sell, it will go well for all of us. So we understand that today there is a problem. We have an expensive country that is not only due to the exchange rate delay. We have and are working with the Chamber with a tool that we have developed a few months ago. We understand that we we have an expensive country that is not competitive because of those bureaucracies that we have: a large, heavy state, with repeated certifications, repeated rates, repeated…

When it comes to keeping a company alive, it is difficult to operate on a daily basis due to procedures that are sometimes cumbersome, bureaucratic, that sometimes lead to nothing, but have to be followed. And the same to close a company. So what we say is to transform from the complex to the simple.

There is a great issue that we have to work on as businessmen together with the State, with the workforce to say “gentlemen, we have to have a State more modern, more agile, more dynamic“There are rates that are different in different departments or situations such as that I make a product here and to be able to work in another department I have to pay another rate, or certifications or authorizations… All these things make the country expensive at the end of the day.

— Should productivity and the reduction of working hours be discussed?

Definitely. We are not closed to anything, we understand that today It has to be accompanied by productivity if there is a reduction in working hours.

So I think you have to work, you have to be aware and say that I have to make up for that difference in some way. With what? With higher productivity. So I think you have to work. Somehow they are looking for the worker to have more leisure time, to spend with his family. If that’s the idea, well, let’s work on it.