MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's economy keeps falling, Indec report shows

Despite overall negative results, Agriculture, Livestock, Hunting, and Forestry showed a 23.6% increase

Argentina's National Institute of Statistics and Census (Indec) Wednesday released a report showing that the economic activity in the South American country fell by 1.3% year-on-year in July.

In the inter-annual comparison, Construction contracted 14.8%, Fishing 9.9%, Manufacturing 5.6%, Wholesale, Retail and Repairs 5.3%, Hotels and Restaurants 4.5%, Other Community, Social and Personal Services 4%, and Financial Services 3.1%.

Showing 1.4% decreases were Public Administration and Defense, Mandatory Social Security Plans, and Real Estate.

In contrast, the sectors with the highest increases were Agriculture, Livestock, Hunting, and Forestry (23.6%), Mining and quarrying (5.7%), Electricity, gas and water (3.6%), Education (0.6%) and Transport and communications (0.2%).

So far this year, Argentina's industrial activity accumulated a drop of 12.8% after a rebound in July followed by yet another slide in August, according to the Industrial Activity Report of the Centro de Estudios de la Unión Industrial Argentina.

The sector “continues to face a challenging outlook” as 69% of the companies reported a 55.7% use on average of their installed capacity. Only Food and Beverages (6.2%) and Oil Refining (1.7%) went up in July in year-on-year terms. The rest were in the red, led by Rubber and Plastics (-18.9%), Publishing and Printing (-18.5%) and Tobacco Products (-17.5%).

In addition, 38.9% of the companies surveyed reported decreases in production, 43.7% in sales, 28.2% in exports, and 17.3% in employment. In all cases, these percentages were lower than in the previous survey.