MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine industry ratifies support for CFK policies, but demands more competitiveness

Mendiguren also praised the call for consensus leaving aside confrontations

Over 80% of the Argentine electorate ratified on Sunday the current economic course, ‘which we must all support’ said the president of the powerful Argentine Industrial Union, Jose Ignacio de Mendiguren, who nevertheless called for a greater effort in “systemic competitiveness”.

“The course must be maintained because the automatic pilot always brought difficult times for Argentina” said the head of UIA who insisted that it was essential to create jobs and promote the domestic market that the country continues with the process of “re-industrialization”.

Mendiguren also underlined the message from Cristina Fernandez on victory night. “The fact that she appealed to create consensus points to an end to confrontations and to discuss only those issues which really need to be discussed and people feel they are worth a discussion”, said the industrial leader arguing that “this has given people more strength to consolidate the process”.

Likewise the industrial leader in line with Deputy Economy minister Roberto Feletti said that the UIA rejects the possibility of implementing a dual foreign exchange rate scheme, “we don’t agree with such an initiative”.

The possibility of having a ‘commercial’ dollar for trade, mainly exports and imports and another ‘free floating’ for the rest of operations (tourism, services, etc) was one of the alternatives that some business circles in Argentina were considering as a proposal to the government to try and end the current dispersion in the Argentine foreign exchange market.

The proposal was born because of the gap between the so called ‘blue’ dollar (against which the Argentine government launched a massive dissuasion offensive) and the ‘official’ dollar (basically established by the Central bank) has increased considerably in recent weeks both because of the elections and because fears of the overall instability that the Argentine economy could be confronting, both externally and domestically, the Day After.

Mendiguren not only was categorically against the dual foreign exchange rate system but also expressed scepticism regarding the effectiveness of a devaluation of the Argentine Peso against the US dollar or the Brazilian Real.

“The exchange rate is but one more instrument of economic policy: where we have to work more intensely is in the systemic competitiveness of the economy, making it more efficient and more productive”, concluded Mendiguren.