MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's economic activity grows 5.6% YoY in July

“The priority is to continue growing while the macroeconomic variables are in order,” De Mendiguren argued

Argentina's National Institute of Statistics and Census (Indec) Monday released a report according to which the country's economic activity grew 5.6% interannually in July.

Meanwhile, in the first seven months of 2022, the Monthly Estimator of Economic Activity (EMAE) accumulated an increase of 6.4%, while hotels and restaurants rose 45.7%, and mining and quarrying, with 13.6% against the same month of the previous year.

The manufacturing industry grew 5.6%, followed by wholesale, retail and repairs 5.7%, and transportation and communications 8.8%.

On a contracting yoy trend were agriculture and livestock 2.7%, fishing 4.1%, and electricity and water distribution 2.1%.

The 2023 Budget Bill, submitted to Congress on Sept. 15, estimated a GDP growth of 4% for the current year, and 2% for next year.

Last week, Industry and Productive Development José Ignacio de Mendiguren pointed out that in the July-September quarter only 51 cases of labor suspensions were recorded.

He insisted that “the priority is to continue growing while the macroeconomic variables are in order.”

“We are going through a difficult situation due to the shortage of dollars, but production is responding and there are almost no suspensions,” said De Mendiguren last week.

According to the last report of the Centro de Estudios para la Producción (CEPXXI), industrial activity in August grew almost 5% year-on-year, with higher consumption of electric energy in plants of the most relevant industries

“We have 612,000 formal jobs, with productive sectors growing very strongly, such as the knowledge-based services industry, which has been on the rise for 25 uninterrupted months and is around 300 thousand formal jobs for the first time in history,” De Mendiguren argued.