MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina insists trade restrictions “in no way represent an obstacle for Mercosur partners”

Presidents Jose Mujica and Cristina Fernandez are scheduled to meet this week in Buenos Aires

Argentine Industry Ministry officials assured Wednesday that non-automatic licenses currently being applied to imports “in no way represent an obstacle for our Mercosur partners” and they have been implemented to monitor imports from outside the region.

“These measures are in place in order to monitor imports from outside Mercosur,” Trade and International Economic Relations Secretary Luis María Kreckler and Industry and Trade Secretary Eduardo Bianchi explained during the Mercosur Common Market Group’s coordinators meeting currently taking place in Asunción, Paraguay.

Argentina in the framework of bilateral mechanisms for monitoring trade has agreed with its Mercosur associates the creation of Monitoring Groups composed of members coming from the official industry sector for each member country.

These groups are set to exchange information on paperwork and will meet periodically in order to analyze the evolution of trade.

Since Argentina announced that it was increasing the list of goods subject to the imports non automatic licences system (from 400 to 600), which basically delays operations while the administration of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner checks the impact for the domestic market and local manufacturing of each particular item, Mercosur associates have been in contact with Argentina demanding an explanation on the extent of the announced measures effective next March.

With Brazil it was agreed that the monitoring group operates in the framework of the regular bilateral meeting of Industry and Trade Secretaries that has been functioning since 2003. A numerous Brazilian delegation was the first to visit Argentina following the announcement.

With Uruguay the group is expected to be part of the Bilateral Commission created by presidents Cristina Fernandez and Jose Mujica in June 2010. Precisely this week President Mujica is flying to Buenos Aires for a regular summit of such an understanding and it is expected the monitoring group mechanism will be agreed and become effective.

A similar mechanism has been proposed for Paraguay, as an appendix of the Bilateral Monitoring committee created at Foreign Affairs level in 2007. Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is scheduled to meet her Paraguayan counterpart Fernando Lugo at the end of the month to talk about energy, trade and other bilateral issues.

Since the announcement of the restriction measures, Argentina has insisted that the main purpose is to restrict imports mainly from Asia which are seriously substituting Argentine manufacturing and taking ‘dominance’ control of the domestic market for certain items.

Argentina has a comfortable surplus in bilateral trade with Mercosur two junior members, Uruguay and Paraguay, but with Brazil its main trade partner the deficit is above 4 billion US dollars.