MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's big business asks for reliability and energy

To ensure sustained development Argentina needs sound political institutions, reliable rules of the game to promote investment and energy, are the conclusions of a report from one of the country's leading business organizations.

In one of its annual meetings the Institute for Business Development in Argentina, IDEA, debated this week on a paper titled "Contributions for a vision of future" underlining that it is essential to match "energy supply with growth", thus ensuring sustainable development and a broader "productive base".

An estimated 500 businessmen, bankers and representatives participated in the debate but no Argentine government officials showed up although several of them were officially invited.

"The challenge for Argentina is to find a sustainable path of open economic development with a revalorization of business as the engine that creates wealth and employment". Furthermore, Argentina needs "an additional 4 to 5 points of GDP in investment with a greater component of the latest technological generation machinery and equipment plus a greater savings rate to ensure its financing".

The report also suggests the need to increase and improve Argentina's export supply profile "to ensure export growth rates of at least 8% annually for the next ten years".

To achieve this, a clear policy of international negotiations is needed to guarantee access to foreign markets and the drafting of new rules of the game for international trade "which definitively contribute to reduce subsidies to farm production".

More specifically, adequate rules are needed to promote the presence of international corporations' affiliates in Argentina with new investments and actions to develop global products integrated to the international system of production.

The report makes it a point to underline the importance of improving the quality of education, and ensure that the 20% bracket of poorest members of the community have access to an educational system with the needed resources to be effective.

"Business development also means business' social responsibility and taking into account all interested parties".

Finally IDEA insists that investing in research and product development must be increased from its current 0.4% of GDP, "trebling in the coming five years to reach the average of Brazil", which anyhow is still distant from the level of the world's more competitive nations