The main chambers that bring together micro, small and medium-sized companies (MSMEs) highlighted the recovery of the activity evidenced in 2021 and agreed that “2022 will be a great year with heavy investments.”
In dialogue with Télam, the president of Industriales Pymes Argentinos (IPA), Daniel Rosato, highlighted that, according to a survey of his entity, in 2021 the industrial SME sector has a growth of 24.5%, mainly driven by the end of sanitary restrictions.
“The opening moved to higher production due to higher demand” and “in all sectors there are good prospects for SMEs” which “gives us breadth, predictability and confidence, which is what we need,” said Rosato.
The industrial entrepreneur praised the SME growth in sectors such as gastronomy, oil and gas, energy, agricultural machinery, mining, auto parts, and underlined the commitment of large companies such as YPF to prioritize purchasing from local SME suppliers.
In that sense, the industrialist from Berazategui asked that “the Compre Argentino law also include large companies.”
For its part, the Assembly of Small and Medium-sized Entrepreneurs (Apyme) stated that “positive expectations of activity and investment are expressed for 2022, which is translating into greater job creation.”
According to a recent survey by the entity, Almost 60% of SMEs already have a higher level of activity than in 2019 and 22.9% are already the same as in the prepandemic.
In the same vein, the secretary of the ProTejer Foundation, Luciano Galfione, pointed out that in the textile sector “we are going to end the year with production rates above those of 2019. In other words, we have already widely exceeded the pre-pandemic levels.”
Furthermore, Galfione remarked that in 2021 “there were record investments with more than US $ 170 million in machinery alone. They are levels that have not been seen for at least 6 years “.
Next year investments “are going to greatly exceed those of this year,” said the textile entrepreneur, estimating that the increased production and supply will allow “slightly accommodating the price indices that we have today” in the sector.
Clothing and footwear prices were above the general Consumer Price Index measured by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec), presenting in November an interannual increase of 62.8%, while the general CPI was 51.2%.
For his part, the president of the National Association of Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs (ENAC), Leo Bilanski, highlighted “the active industrial policies that allowed industries to have an installed capacity level above 60 throughout the year. % “.
Among the concerns expressed by businessmen for next year, Rosato said that “The possibility of accessing more financing for investments will be key, both to supply the domestic market and to export. “
Accordingly, from Apyme they maintained that “it is necessary to refine protection mechanisms for the national industry and improve access to state support programs, which must still reach the sector as a whole.”
Bilanski assured that “the growth that is being reflected even in a drop in unemploymentIt still has challenges to solve for this to become development. “
In that sense, he postulated that “We need inflation -which is around 52% year-on-year- to cut in half; that the minimum wage -which stands at $ 250- tends to double in the short term; and that 50 thousand new SMEs are created “.
Meanwhile, from ProTejer they pointed out that “what has not yet recovered is consumption, mainly in clothing, which is clearly explained by the loss of purchasing power of the population.”
According to Indec measurements, in the first 10 months of the year, economic activity as a whole accumulated an improvement of 10.4%.
On the subject, the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán pointed out that “we are very close to closing the year with a growth of 10%” in the Gross Domestic Product, which will allow to recover the drop of 9.9% registered in 2020 in the middle of the first wave of coronavirus “.
With regard to the production of industrial SMEs, between January and November there was an increase of 22.7% compared to the same period in 2020 and 2.5% compared to the same period in 2019, according to data from the Argentine Confederation of the Medium Enterprise (CAME).
