Economic-Institutional Alert: Moreno bites his tail

The persistent fall of Argentine exports has its origin in the duality of conception set by the economic model in function: high dollar or protection of ''Argentine's table'' or, from another point of view, exportation or consumption.

The centralized planification dream exercised in his own style by Guillermo Moreno to stop imports, from the oral imposition to companies preventing them to buy from abroad, has as main objective to take care of the reserves, from ever meager external superavits. Although the great paradox of intervention is that the secretary of Commerce, with his vigilance and closure of exportations, is the direct responsible for that minor income of trade money, something that obliges him to put a patch on a patch. However, this officer is not to blame, but the perversity of the system.

To frame the situation on has to take into account that Argentina still has no access to credit, preventing it to receive money through finance below 10% annual interest and until June it suffered a constant loss of capital, things that could change in the short term.

Even the authorities of the Stock Exchange are speculating that the President can authorize a higher flexibilization of the entrance of short term capital, since they currently have an imposed permanence and a mandatory bank reserve. Everything needed to show a considerable number of reserves, though the counterpart may be inflation or esterilization with a cost, the federal government uses it for political marketing.

The figures of trade shed a first light on Morenos activism and one clearly observes where the problems are. The numbers of the trade balance of June showed a superavit of U$S 1,291 millions, showing a reduce of 19 per cent in comparison to the same month of 2009.

But when looking closer one can see that the imports increased 40 per cent in the year to U$S 5,062 millions and exports grew only 22 per cent totaling U$S 6,353 millions.

With these results, foreign trade closed the first semester with a positive result of U$S 7,491 millions, 25 per cent less to the one obtained on 2009 in the same period. This fall was the produced by the increase of 43 per cent of imports of U$S 24,803 millions and, in exchange, exportations grew only 18 per cent, to U$S 32,294 millions.

In the face of such deviations, the new offensive of the officer is no surprise with the stop of adquisitions abroad, direct presures to several sectors such as food, laboratories, supermakets and car companies and with the request of imports lists to the members of UIA.

As can be seen, the seriousness of the situation is not only related to the permanent change of rules, but with the sistematic fall of exports that, except for soy, have the origin in the excluding nature of the economic model: high dollar or protection of the "Argentine's table" or, from another point of view, exportation or internal consumption.

Today the world buys meat, milk and grains and Argentina has done nothing else in the last two years than loosing markets thanks to the official stop of exportations that had Moreno as leader. Brazil and Uruguay have been the beneficiaries of this policy, while there are always more sectors stating the exchange rate slowdown.

So, all the problem of the permanent change of rules flows around the lack of investment that asolates Argentina since a couple of years ago. Between internal inflation and the difficulty of selling abroad, the result is that the companies reduce the offer, feeding the inflation cycle and makes them to adhere to the consumption depending model for necessity.