In her latest book, Understanding an Elephant, biologist Guadalupe Nogués reflects on wild problems, so called because of their complexity. The pandemic, for example. But, What are the wild issues that challenge Massa?
For the economist Martín Rapetti it depends on the size. “Structurally, the growth and extreme poverty. Facing this 2023 election, Massa depends on lowering inflation, recovering wages and growing the economy amid a major drought blow that siphons off $13,000 million and a troubling peso debt that the Treasury used to finance the deficit. There is concern because the private sector does not want to finance beyond September faced with the uncertainty of who will be the next government. And between the second and third quarters you have to fulfill commitments that They are equal to 1% of GDP.
When asked, a financier replies that Massa is creative. The committee announced for the debt with the pro bono assistance of Daniel Marx. They imagine instruments for investments in pesos. He hasn’t disclosed what those are and they depend on things being fixed in an economy where blue and inflation have communicating vessels. “The problems to be solved are very deep. Let us not be prejudiced in the solutions”Marx released at one of those meetings.
Among trade unionists, the focus is on parities that will reopen in March. Industrialists do not feel a warlike climate. “The CGT is confident in Massa’s ability to negotiate and contacts, they believe he will arrive and won’t complicate things,” confessed one of those characters in the second row of a company that has relations with the unions.
He says that in meetings between union leaders and business owners, the unionists tell him so: “Argentina is under agreement with the IMF, there is no room for irresponsibility”. The statement is not enough to reassure business interlocutors.
In this climate of dizziness due to the rise of the dollar and the draining of reserves, Lula has arrived. We have seldom seen a government so attached to a figure that he is the star of the moment. The visit changed the agenda, except that of the president of Brazil himself, who did not find the space to visit Cristina Kirchner.
One more piece of information: Lula has been informed noted dulled in Argentina and very smiling in Uruguay. He arrived with about fifty businessmen from regional powerhouses, as well as the president of the powerful National Confederation of Industry, Robson Braga de Andrade.
What did not go unnoticed was Rubens Ometto Silveira Mello, a personal friend of Daniel Scioli. hometown he built an empire on sugar and ethanol. His company, Cosan, is an energy, logistics and real estate giant and has partnered with Raízen’s Shell to maintain Anglo-Dutch gas stations in Argentina. He promised new investments.
On Monday, industrialists from both countries met at the UIA headquarters for a joint document agreed between Daniel Funes de Rioja and Braga de Andrade. The message went to two ends, Bolsonaro and Cristina: “Economic stability and respect for institutions”.
There were other points such as the harmonization of labels and packaging or the need for a logistics corridor from Santos to Buenos Aires, which still does not exist when 24% of exports go to Brazil. It is our main trading partner and we are the third of them.
After the visit, it escaped those who surrounded Scioli that he felt like an ambassador with rising shares. Is that faced with the promise of a common currency, remained in the nebula, the financing of Argentine purchases and the second section of the Vaca Muerta gas pipeline arrive in Brazil. This time from the BNDS with the heart in Rio de Janeiro.
Scioli thanked Lula in the hope of another record in bilateral trade that reached 30 billion dollars and spoke to the Brazilians about a motorboating lesson: “Races are won before they start.” What did she mean?
Beatriz Nofal, of radical faith and a pioneer in the creation of Mercosur, highlights the line of financing that will help unlock imports of auto parts among other key industrial products, without putting pressure on reserves. Nofal is not afraid of an increase in the trade deficit. “Demand is not stimulated. It is the Banco do Brasil that will finance the Brazilian provider for one year”. The economist thinks that Lula’s arrival implies the recovery of a course in Mercosur with greater flexibility.
Where flexibility does not appear is in the Secretary of Commerce, who, despite having kept protesters and truckers away from checkpoints, threatens to Superlative fines for those who refuse to accept a 3.2% adjustment. in prices instead of the already agreed guideline of 4%. Between inflation that has risen again and explanations to the parent companies, the managing directors are surprised by the questions arriving from abroad: “They are more interested in the court process than in the budgets”, slipped one.
“It is logical that they are very concerned,” says former Economy Minister Jesús Rodríguez. The nation’s current auditor skirts around a phrase that is commonplace: “Populism without money doesn’t work. quite the opposite, without money it works better, Accentuating their practices given the inability to meet social needs exacerbates the other, such as attacks on the Court.”
In another area, Gustavo Weiss, president of the Chamber of Construction, says they are in a minefield. “The formula for updating public works contracts, in force since 2021, has become outdated with these inflation rates and payment delays reaching unbearable limits. Companies start to get complicated by taking debts from banks at 7 or 8% per month. It is a situation that is also suffered in the provinces”. In turn, private jobs have calmed down as sales have stalled despite falling prices.
This situation contrasts with the boom manifested by oil tankers. Nicolás Gadano, the reference in Energy in the Together for Change teams, underlines that the enthusiasm for Vaca Muerta is reasonable, competitive today and consolidated in its productivity improvement.
“Even with the economy in this state, the industry sorted out and launched the pipeline which allows oil to be exported to Chile”. Gadano argues that big companies wait to bring in dollars and those already installed reinvest due to inventories. “The large-scale project that is coming is that of the liquefied gas plant that needs a regulatory standard.”
Gadano also refers to offshore production where Norwegian Equinor is willing to explore with an investment of US$80 million with the possibility of a big prize. “If all goes well, these are fields of the order of 200-300 thousand barrels per day, which is equivalent to 50% of current production. We have to add renewable energy and the Australian Fortescue investment in green hydrogen in the Río Negro, which is serious. With an improved macro, this will grow very fast in 2024,” he enthuses.
Precisely, Equinor is changing CEOs in the country: the active Nidia Alvarez returns to Oslo and is replaced by José Frey for the new stage.
The one who will be disappointed is Vadim Titov, president of RMS (Rusatom), the Russian nuclear leader. Next week comes with the confidence to supply equipment to the fourth nuclear power plant. But the delayed Atucha III has already agreed that its reactor will be Chinese technology Hualong One. Finding this out, Titov stays for just one day and continues on to Bolivia, where they are expanding a nuclear research facility.
What seemed like another boom is deflating here and around the world. As interest rates rise in the US, cheap money and tech companies, which used to be a sponge, are gone they are in the midst of an adjustment that is measured in thousands of layoffs. Lisandro Bril, one of the major venture capital investors, ensures that the money only goes to projects of environmental sustainability and traceable food production.
Bril went to pass the cap to Mecca: the sovereign wealth funds of the Arab countries interested in the food security of the emirates. Here’s what explains the purchase of Nutresa, Colombia’s main food company, by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
In turn, the Israeli ambassador, Eyal Sela, is surprised by the strength of what he calls internal Argentina. Very active, together with Mario Montoto, at the time president of the Chamber of Commerce between the two countries, they launched together with Mekorot, the Israeli water company, a master plan for the management of this increasingly appreciated resource. Was in Mendoza and San Juan. Now it’s Rio Negro’s turn.
By the way, the productive catastrophe caused by drought is turning possible losses. Elbio Laucirica, president of Coninagro, raised it without hesitation in the meeting with Minister Massa. “The repayment of loans by the chacareros is very compromised.” They have asked for the return of the differentiated pay slips, which oxygenate from the public bank to the cooperatives which finance 50% of the harvest.
A few weeks before Massa treated Uruguay like a younger brother, these cooperative members met with Lacalle Pou in Colonia. They praised Uruguay’s democratic and economic stability and told him: “President, we must learn from you”.
Source: Clarin
