The CEO and Country Head of Santander Argentina, Alejandro Butti, was at Expoagro on Wednesday and highlighted the iImportance of the agro-industrial sector for the country. It was while presenting the company’s value propositions to manufacturers at the trade show, which closes this Friday.

“It is the most important sector for the country“, summed up the manager on what the field means. And he gave numbers to support his statement. It can produce food for 400 million inhabitants, 8.5 times more than the inhabitants in Argentina: it means 65% of total exports; it generates 2 out of every 10 private formal jobs and 1 out of every 4 pesos the state collects comes from the countryside.

But despite these data, warned the serious situation that the sector is going through due to drought, and then, the first frosts that ended up causing soybean and corn crops to collapse.

According to estimates by the Rosario Stock Exchange, the soybean, wheat and corn harvest will decrease by 50 million tons. Even with the higher prices, the loss of net income from the productive sector already amounts to 14,140 million dollars and the impact on the economy reaches 3 points of GDP.

“It’s been a year since the banks have to appear“, Butti said. “We are here to support you with a battery of products and services,” he added during the conference held by Santander at Expoagro.

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One of the major interests of producers concerns financing, which is why the first Argentine financial institution -with 4.4 million customers- offers pre-approved financingthrough important credit lines and a wide offer at very competitive rates.

Another of the axes of Expoagro 2023 will be, as usual in this period of the beginning of the harvest, agricultural machinery. In this regard, the institution finances the purchase of new or used seed drills, reapers and tractors with pledge loans, with a up to 15 years, among other agricultural machines. Santander account with more than 60 deals in progress for the purchase of agricultural machinery, at a fixed rate and in pesos, and with forms of payment that adapt to the production cycle.

Fernando Bautista, leader of Agronegocios de Santander Argentina reported that operations tripled compared to last year in agricultural machinery equipment during the first two days of Expoagro, “This boom is due to two reasons: producers want to invest and continue to expand and because there are more units available,” he said.

“In a context where we hear a lot about the drought, I have noticed that producers are very interested in continuing to grow,” he added.

On the other hand, livestock is another of Santander’s strategic pillars, which is why Expoagro delivers preferential conditions for the purchase of wintering animals and solutions to encourage investments in breeders, among them more than 30 agreements with the main recipients and booths throughout the country, with presence in auctions to finance financing with the Santander Agronegocios card and with the 1-year check discount. In addition to traditional long-term lines of credit in pesos and dollars.

Finally, another proposal of the bank that is in line with the digital transformation of the entity and the economy in general, is the presentation of its Santander Agronegocios platform, an initiative that directly connects the entire agricultural ecosystem in an agile and online. A 100% digital channelthrough which its producer customers will be able to connect with their main suppliers to finance the purchase of inputs, paying them in 2024.