:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/LUIVL7YDUEP4PYEPNZO3DDOXRQ.jpg "Drought: They warn that February will be \"one of the lowest months in history\" in terms of foreign exchange earnings from agriculture 1")
Gustave Idigoraspresident of the Chamber of Petroleum Industry of the Argentine Republic (CIARA) and the Cereals Export Center (CEC) warned that the sector had lost foreign sales of more than 10,000 million dollars to the following the drought, and announced that this month will show in terms of foreign exchange earnings »a poor result, one of the lowest in history”. In this regard, there is an effect of the decline in the wheat harvest of almost 50%, which has an impact on exports, and also the effect of the soybean dollar where sales have been brought forward by producers.
Due to effects of drought, agricultural exports could fall by more than $8 trillion
These are data provided by the economist Juan Manuel Garzón, who projected three possible scenarios. In the most complicated cases, the losses exceed 10,000 million dollars
All this demonstrates the impact that a very deep adverse climatic situation is already having on the rest of the economy in the agricultural sector, which has been strongly felt in the drought that has affected different crops for the third consecutive season. In the meantime, the Government hopes that in this complicated scenario for campaign dollar revenues and in view of the proposal made in recent days by the Minister of the Economy, Sergio Massathe International Monetary Fund (IMF) defines the new reserve targets and it is also expected that in the second quarter the export tap will be reopened
In a dialogue with GlobeLiveMedia, Idígoras said that “the drought is hitting us very hard and it’s the worst in the last three years, for although it repeated itself, it intensified. First came the winter crops, where we lost 10 million tonnes of wheat, and also some barley. Now, premium corn has been lost and the prospect is for soybeans and corn to fall sharply, resulting in a loss of exports of over $10,000 million. In other words, what the producer cannot harvest because he does not have it and we cannot buy it from him, we cannot sell it. So there will be enormous unused capacity, a phenomenal drop in export contracts and a loss of several million dollars for this sector”.
“The drought is hitting us very hard” (Idígoras)
For all this, he said that the “loss of several million dollars” that the drought will cause to the agro-industrial sector, the Argentine macroeconomics will also be affected: “100% of Argentine imports will be seriously affected in the electronics sectors , consumption and industrial input sectors, among others. Asked about the situation of foreign trade in cereals, Idígoras said that “the February close is the result of a poor month. One of the lowest in history. This is reflected in currencies and in the entry of trucks into ports. This is also reflected in the volume of grinds processed, which will be extremely low. This result is due to the climate crisis and the effect of the December Soy Dollar, which anticipated soybean sales in January, February and March. For this reason, there is no commercial stock of old season soybeans to market at this time. »
From CIARA – CEC they also assess that after the difficulties in having fine grains, such as wheat, there are also problems in planting first-class corn, since there is not enough moisture in the ground to respect said coverage. In this sense, all this movement annually generates up to 9 million tons for this period to carry out shipments. But this year, for the third consecutive dry spell, as the head of the oil chamber put it, those shipments “will probably be reduced very significantly”.
On the other hand, Idígoras highlighted the difficulties that the lack of rainfall in the current agricultural cycle is causing in the segment of oil and soybean processing plants, given the sharp decline that oilseed production will suffer in due to the effects of various adverse weather conditions. .
The purchase and sale of fields also affected by the drought: in January the activity fell by almost 20%
According to the Argentine Chamber of Rural Real Estate, this has also affected the seasonality of the summer months and the country’s political and economic uncertainty.
“Argentina has one of the biggest industrial poles in the world, with the capacity to absorb and grind 70 million tons of soybeans, and this year, with any luck, some 33 million tons of local production. can enter. This involves shutting down the plant for a long period per year. Also losing contracts and having a problem with staff. There are approximately 22,500 direct jobs and another 53,000 indirect in the port areas of Santa Fe, Bahía Blanca and Necochea,” said the head of Ciara-Cec.
Finally, Idígoras also assured that soybean imports could increase, as this media reported last week, which usually come from Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia. This year, like Paraguay, it has also suffered a drought due to the closure of its oilseed campaign, and many local oilseed milling companies have closed their purchases from sources such as Brazil.
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