Automotive crisis: no prices in dealerships or parts in factories

In three weeks of 2024, dealers they were priceless to sell new cars. And many of the car factories They lack parts to produce vehicles.

It is possible that the pricing issue will be resolved within a few days, as it depends on a decision by the Ministry of Economy on internal taxes which it would be falling.

The lack of dollars, however, has persisted for 22 months, as a underlying threat to automotive companies and the production sector as a whole.

At the moment only one car manufacturer, Toyota Argentina, has used the tool offered by the Government, the bonus Bopreal, to obtain additional credit from your external suppliers. More automakers may sign up for this bonus in the coming weeks, including some that have just confirmed they won’t They will resume their activity due to lack of supplies.

Even if this move were successful, even if vehicle sales resumed with a new tariff for internal taxes, the general expectation It’s a year of decline: the forecasts are fewer vehicle sales, less production and export volume.

The Toyota Etios AIBO, a vehicle that cannot be found this week due to “lack of price”, is the cheapest “generalist” vehicle and is listed at 9.8 million pesos, approximately $12,000.

Dante Sica, who served as Macri’s industry minister and runs the consultancy firm Abeceb, said the devaluation and lack of credit They will leave the dealership halls half empty.

“Today the people earn an average of $400 per month. The car companies will sell them the trucks to the countryside, to the mining companies, to the oil companies. But zero kilometer sales will decline for the middle class until bank credit appears.”

According to the Automotive Dealers Association (ACARA), zero kilometer sales this year will decrease by 30% against 450,000 patents in 2023. “This figure could you have to check itafter the first few months,” he anticipated Sebastiano Beatoowner of the institution.

Nowhere

Sica noted that investments from automotive terminals will be added for the launch of new models They are conspicuous by their absence.

“The last major project was Ford’s investment in the General Pacheco plant for the new Ranger, launched last year. There are some projects out there, not yet confirmed, and the redesign of the Volkswagen Amarok is underway. But if we look at the whole, the Argentine automotive industry missed a complete investment cycle in recent years,” he added.

Immediately, to the Trade and Industry area led by Pablo Lavigne and supervises Juan PazoA new front, with the announcement of four car factories that are not returning to work because they lack spare parts.

General Motors He postponed his return from holidays for two weeks, from January 29 to mid-February; Volkswagen He stretched it out just under a month, from the beginning of February to the end of that month. And the partners Renault and Nissan, which share a production line in Córdoba, have postponed the shoot without a date. “We don’t have the necessary parts,” they said.

The other automotive companies (Ford, Fiat, Peugeot, Iveco and Mercedes-Benz) have resumed their activity or are doing so these days. But everyone, without exception, is having difficulties with their external suppliers after having accumulated since March 2022, when the Central Bank restricted inventories, a debt that In total it amounts to 6,000 million dollarsaccording to estimates from the Association of Automobile Manufacturers (ADEFA).

At the moment the only one to have used the tool offered by the Milei government is Toyota. Ten days ago, the subsidiary of the Japanese automaker signed approx 1 billion dollars of the Bonus for the Reconstruction of Free Argentina or the Bopreal.

Diego Prado, Toyota’s institutional director, did not confirm (nor deny) the amount invested in the new bond. But he said it differently they would not have been able to resume activity at the Zárate plantwhere 8,500 people work.

“We ran the risk of no longer being able to produce,” Prado told Clarín. “We needed to resolve the debt and one of the options became the Bopreal bond. It took us three weeks to get the decision from our office in Japan.”

The Central Bank has confirmed that there will be new tenders for the Bopreal Series I, intended for large companies, and everything indicates this other automotive companies They will follow Toyota’s path.

“We are analyzing it,” he said. Ricardo FlamminiPresident of NissanArgentina. “Canceling our debt, both to Nissan subsidiaries and overseas suppliers, is a priority.”

For the branch of General Motors, It is also an alternative. “The only tool available today is Bopreal and our technical areas are analyzing it,” said a spokesperson for the American automaker. They said the same thing in Volkswagen: «It must be approved by the internal areas and also by Brazil, but it is being analyzed». A similar response is heard when consulting the directors of Stellantisthe brand that brings together the Fiat factories in Córdoba and the Peugeot factories in El Palomar.

Priceless

The lack of vehicle prices at dealerships is because the government has not updated the basis on which it charges domestic taxes on the sale of zero-kilometre vehicles. As of last year that value remains at 14.7 million pesos for the first stage. If automakers, who had increased prices by 40% in December, added 25% from December, all zero kilometers would be covered by the tax.

For this reason, Afip is expected to update the tax base from January 1st: the Government promises that the new scale values ​​”are about to be released”. Meanwhile, for three weeks a year, the terminals do not invoice new vehicles to their dealer network.

“We are selling shares of our stock to pay salaries and taxes,” they said in a Capital group that sells the Stellantis brands.

An ADEFA executive, in a voice-over, said that what is coming is a year “in which we will move from a supply problem like the one we have had for the last four years to a demand problem.”

—At least there won’t be any surcharges or delays, like up until now?

—We don’t even know, yet.