Argentina's car production plunged 54.6% in January compared to the same month last year, the Automakers' Chamber (ADEFA) reported yesterday
The number of cars manufactured in the country totalled 18,720, down from 41,228 in January 2008.
Argentina's powerful trade unions are stepping up calls for salary increases despite an economic slowdown and since it is election year they could win double-digit hikes to offset inflation.
Five people, including two children, died and at least 47 others have been injured in the storm that is battering central Argentina, which was recently hit by the worst drought in the past 50 years, officials said Tuesday.
Cordoba and Santa Fe, two big farming provinces in Argentina, are calling on the federal government to suspend crop export taxes for three to six months to help farmers in the face of the worst drought in decades.
With 396 cruise vessel calls this season Ushuaia in the extreme south of Argentina's Tierra del Fuego confirms its hub condition for the industry in the southern hemisphere, according to local authorities.
Holders of 15.1 billion pesos (4.3 billion US dollars) of Argentine local debt agreed to swap the securities for longer-term bonds in an exchange the government set up to help cover its growing financing needs.
The extreme drought conditions which most of Argentina's rich farmland is suffering will have an impact on the soybean crop that is now estimated in the range of 40 million tons, down 16.7% from the previous crop according to the Argentine Association of Agriculture experimentation regional consortia, AACREA.
The Argentine government declared on Monday an agricultural emergency in areas affected by the worst drought to hit the country in four decades and which has extended to most of the country's farmlands.
Money leaving Argentina trebled in 2008 compared to the previous year and was 23% higher to the great capital flight of the second half of 2001 and first half of 2002 which totalled 18.7 billion US dollars and triggered the collapse of the banking system and melting of the economy, according to a report in La Nacion.
Argentina and Venezuela signed on Thursday twenty one cooperation agreements on a range of fields, particularly agro-industry, energy and medical supplies, consolidating the strategic and political alliance between both administrations dating back to 2003.