MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Hard-line Kirchner political official takes over Fisheries

Norberto Yahuar

Argentina's Fisheries Under Secretary Geardo Nieto resigned after five years in the post and this week he will be replaced by Norberto Yahuar another close associate of former president Nestor Kirchner, according to Buenos Aires press reports.

Although no specific reasons for the change were given and Mr. Nieto insists "it's only for very personal reasons" and "after five years it's time to leave", the depredation of the hake resource and regional politics apparently played a key role in letting him go. Mr. Nieto is a fisheries expert from the Kirchners feud of Santa Cruz province and Mr. Yahuar from Chubut, also a Patagonian province with a significant fishing industry, but with a governor who even belonging to the hegemonic Peronist party, has dared to challenge the ruling couple. Yahuar currently works with Federal Planning minister Julio De Vido, one of Mr. Kirchner's closest aides and who manages government corporations and the distribution of federal funds for public works. Currently he was involved in the process of nationalization of Aerolineas Argentinas. Before he was the liaison to Chubut province and had to quit after several misunderstandings with governor Das Neves. It is now believed that the Kirchners are promoting hard liner Yahuar with the purpose of competing with governor Das Neves who considers himself a presidential hopeful and has had dissenting positions with the ruling couple the latest during the farmers' conflict. More specifically on fisheries Mr. Nieto who had launched a relatively successful plan (in Argentine terms) to recover hake (with squid) the main source of the country's exports and which has seen catches drop almost 70% in twenty years because of non scientific management and depredation, was beginning to feel he did not have with President Cristina Kirchner, the political support he enjoyed with her husband. The faithful Nieto spent several months without official confirmation when Mrs. Kirchner took office which impeded him from signing resolutions and his policies were further deteriorated when it was decided to increase the hake "social" quota 1.000 tons, 500 for Chubut and 500 for Santa Cruz. The social quota is basically to contain unemployment in the fisheries sector. Argentine press reports also indicate that his attempts to discipline the sector with satellite monitoring of fishing vessels, stricter control of catches, sizes and volume, and re-impose an effective quota system the least politically influenced, were rapidly weakening. Recent Buenos Aires television programs showing high seas fishing depredation and waste (on average 30% of catches are returned dead to the sea, mostly juveniles) also contributed to his demise. Nieto never denied that the fishing industry "lacks transparency and is as corrupt as any other sector or industry in Argentina", but definitively his time was up. The Argentine fishing industry also faces growing unionized labour costs and diminishing income as international prices fall and fuel prices soared, plus export taxes (5 to 10%) modest by farm standards, but which Mr. Yahuar, with official blessing, might manage to have removed or compensated.