MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina’s whitewashing bill could attract “around 5 billion dollars”

Argentine Industrial Union José De Mendiguren gave its cautious support to the bill

The head of Argentina’s Lower House Budget and Finance Committee and former Finance minister Roberto Feletti said that the whitewashing bill should allow the entrance of “around 5 billion dollars” into Argentina’s market. For the MP, the government is “fighting a historic battle to block” what he called a “market coup.”

Recalling that the 2009 whitewash move brought 4 billion dollars back home and created 35,000 taxpayers, Feletti estimated further expectations. “Everything is set to believe that such figures will be beaten. I have expectations of 5 billion dollars entering the country,” he told reporters from a local radio station.

“This measure is the necessary step of an economic policy that has been successfully outlined since last year to strengthen external accounts,” the ruling coalition lawmaker affirmed rejecting positions that say the government’s move will turn Argentina into a “tax haven” and accusing economic groups of fuelling capital fight.

“(The decision) was taken facing the logic of big economic groups that make profits in Argentina in pesos, turned them into dollars and take them out of the country,” he stated describing a practice that, he added, led to “recurrent crises in the past as well as indebtedness.

In related news the president of the Argentine Industrial Union José De Mendiguren came on stage to support the tax amnesty saying that sectors like real estate and energy could regain dynamism.

He went on to warn that “Argentines hoard around 40 billion dollars in the country and about three times more abroad,” adding the return of “only 20% of those millions of dollars could unblock investments in the energy and real estate sectors”.

Referring to the markets' reaction to the government's bill, De Mendiguren stressed “it has been announced recently, it must be assimilated first and then we'll have to wait until the Congress passes the bill to see how its implementation will be.”