The national government presented its livestock policy for the next two years and established its position regarding the export and domestic consumption of beef for next year, by providing an expansion in shipments abroad but with the prohibition of exporting seven barbecue cuts and the intention of dumping an extra 20,000 tons of meat on the local market for the festivities at affordable prices.
The first step was taken by the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Julián Domínguez, when announcing last Thursday the GanAr 2022/23 livestock plan, with the aim of generating “predictability and confidence” in the sector after the disagreements that occurred after the Government’s decision to limit meat exports in May of this year, due to the sharp rise in domestic prices of the product.
At a press conference, and after meeting with the authorities of the Mesa de Enlace, Domínguez announced a plan for the next two years in which the export of category D, E and F beef is released, the quotas are eliminated, but the ban is maintained to market the seven barbecue cuts abroad (Asado, matambre, empty, square, skirt, barbecue cover and shoulder).
“In this administration we have the objective of leading globally in international markets. I aspire to work so that the next Minister of Agriculture announces that one million tons were exported.”Julian Dominguez
Any change in this scheme will be discussed next April in the framework of the brand new Advisory Council that will be made up of the Ministry, national organizations and agricultural entities, when updated data on the livestock stock are available.
Credit line
What’s more, Credit lines will be launched through Banco Nación for $ 100,000 million in order to achieve an increase in production, especially in achieving a greater weight in slaughter animals and improving weaning rates.
These two points for the portfolio are essential, since they consider as the neuralgic point for the proper functioning of the chain an increase in the production of meat that reduces the tensions between the domestic market and the export, especially with regard to jumps in prices, and can grow in foreign trade.
According to Domínguez during the press conference, the average work weight is 210 kilos for the local market and 250 kilos for export, an issue that the Government seeks to “correct” and establish a “path” that allows it to go to a greater weight to increase productivity, although for that it will also have to wait to know how many animals make up the national herd.
“In this administration we have the objective of leading globally in international markets. I aspire to work so that the next Minister of Agriculture announces that one million tons were exported,” said the head of the national portfolio, in his eagerness to leave Clearly, the Government’s intention to increase exports, at the same time that it stressed the need for a correct supply of the domestic market, since it understands meat as “a cultural asset of the Argentines.”
For its part, from the Ministry of Internal Trade consider the price of meat as one of the main issues to resolve, seeking to make it accessible to the bulk of the population, especially at these times of the year and taking into account the increases that occurred in values on the consumer farm during November around 15% and 20%, which moved to the gondolas to a greater or lesser extent.
That is why it seeks to agree with the export sector, with which it held a meeting this Friday but also with other members of the chain, that in the days before Christmas and New Year’s Eve an additional volume of five cuts is turned over to the domestic market grills, such as the asado, the skirt, the asado cover, the vacuum and the matambre.
Although the portfolio led by Roberto Feletti did not specify a tonnage, Domínguez himself anticipated that it would be about 20,000 tons.
This Monday Feletti will hold new meetings with cold stores that mainly serve the domestic market and with supermarkets, in order to finish shaping the plan.
One of the chambers that will be at the meeting is the Federation of Regional Refrigerating Industries (Fifra), whose president, Daniel Urcía, told Télam that the announcements made by Domínguez “are in the correct line and that we are moving towards 2022 removing obstacles to the free Commerce”.
“There will remain the seven cuts in a process of change from one system to another and that is gradual. I do not see it badly, but I do not endorse it: we continue to insist that there must be free trade and removal of retentions”added.
For his part, the president of the Argentine Agrarian Federation (FAA), Carlos Achetoni, indicated that these measures are “a beginning that marks an tentative roadmap that must be ratified with facts, with the fulfillment of the word and in the search to involve all the productive sectors so that they produce more, with clear conditions “.
However, he considered that “it is not logical to maintain the cuts (prohibited for export); in the conjunctural it may have a meaning, but if one analyzes the arrival effect, it is not federal because it reaches the most populated centers, not the that they are having a bad time in the interior, not even in the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. It is more a visualization that they exist somewhere “.
