MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Dollar drought forces Argentina to extend whitewash law until December 31

Cristina Fernandez was expecting 4 billion dollars but only 350 million turned up

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández has decided to extend the deadline of the whitewash law until the end of December. The recently passed project expired on Monday with 341.5 million dollars entering the country.

“Operational reasons” and the “purpose” to allow more people to access the “benefits” of the whitewash legislation has driven the Cristina Fernandez administration to go ahead with a 3-month extension.

The tax amnesty law has accounted only for 8.5% of a 4 billion dollar intake it expected to collect following also the CEDIN move -a real estate and construction certificate of the federal government that offers citizens a three-month tax amnesty to turn undeclared cash into payable certificates, without the requisite to specify origins.

Prior to the resolution published in the official gazette under the 1503/13 decree, AFIP tax bureau head Ricardo Echegaray had recommended the president to conclude the whitewash process.

“It was a measure that did not come up with the results we expected,” Echegaray admitted in reference to the less that 350 million dollars collected since the Lower House signed the bill into law back in May.

In related news former Argentine Central Bank chief Aldo Pignanelli anticipated the whitewash plan launched by the administration two months ago “will have a bad ending” as the government “lied and drove mistrust” among people regarding that new mechanism.

“The government said the whitewash plan was launched to reactivate the real estate market and when it was regulated, it was clear it had been created for the Central Bank to amass international reserves,” he recalled.

According to Pignanelli, “the procedure was not good” adding “if you add what’s abroad and hidden below mattresses and safety boxes there are more than 100 billion undeclared dollars” in Argentina.

“Hopefully those dollars will return to the country, but for that to happen, we need to change,” he added.