Government launches the Gas Plan to make $5 bn in investments

The national government will implement from Wednesday the plan to encourage the production of natural gas known as Plan Gas.Ar. The production and investment commitments' offers will open on Wednesday. The new scheme will make $5 billion in production investments viable for all the producing basins.

Metallurgy: activity grew 1.2% year-on-year in October

In October, metallurgical production improved compared to the same month last year. The year-on-year growth, according to data from the Association of Metallurgical Industries of the Argentine Republic (ADIMRA), was 1.2%. The sector's recovery is due to an expectation of devaluation. Faced with the impossibility of taking refuge in dollars, many are turning to durable goods. The manufacture of this type of product then pushes the metallurgical chain.

The income of agricultural dollars falls in November 5%

Neither the temporary drop in retentions nor the rise in international prices that consolidated an increase of more than 30% since last March, managed to accelerate the liquidation of foreign currency in agriculture in November, which would end up with around $1.6 billion, a drop of about 5% concerning the previous month. The year would end with a fall of approximately 15%.

The price in dollars of the properties had its biggest fall in 15 years in Buenos Aires

Hand in hand with the loss of value of the peso against the dollar, the price of real estate in the City of Buenos Aires is increasingly lower. The dollar values of used two and three-room apartments showed an average decrease of 6.7% during the last quarter and 16.7% in its interannual comparison. The drop reaches 22.09% if we compare the current value with February 2019 (the peak) which reached $2,400 per m2, this is the seventh quarter of consecutive falls.

The private industry fell 3.2% in October

The Industrial Production Index (IPI) registered a year-on-year fall of 3.2% in October. Concerning September, the activity showed an advance of 1.2%, although in seasonally adjusted terms it did not improve.

Due to the pandemic, unemployment in the city of Buenos Aires jumped to 13.4%

Due to the pandemic, and the quarantine paralyzed vast sectors of the economic activity, in the third quarter of this year in the city of Buenos Aires, almost 199,807 people were unemployed, and unemployment jumped to 13.4%. There is an improvement compared to 14.7% in the second quarter, but a deterioration compared to a year ago when it was 10.5%.

Trade surplus decreased by 65% compared to October 2019

Under the effect of a high exchange rate gap, the trade surplus fell in October tou$612 million, according to the INDEC on Tuesday. The figure was 65% lower than that recorded in October 2019. This decline caused by a 21.6% year-on-year drop in exports, the highest so far this year. According to data from the official institute of public statistics, foreign sales during the tenth month of the year totalled some $4.6 billion. Imports were $4 billion, with a decline of only 2.8% year-on-year.

Public companies need $6.9 million per day to operate

Five hundred fifty-seven million pesos per day ($6.9 mn) is the amount needed to sustain the operation of the public companies during the first nine months of the year, 60% more than in 2019.

International soybean price closed at $439.15

The price of soybeans in the international market closed yesterday its seventh consecutive day of rising to reach $439.15 per ton, its highest value in six years, a figure that also revalues the local harvest to a record $15.5 billion. It is an ideal scenario for the Argentinean economy that would start receiving the most substantial foreign currency income between March and April next year.

Treasury to use $4.27 billion in BCRA profit transfers through year-end

In the last two weeks, the Treasury requested assistance from the Central Bank in the form of profit transfers of 60 billion pesos ($745 mn). The government will use the $4.27 billion margin it still has for 2020. The Central Bank can finance Treasury in two ways: transitory advances -TA- (10% of the monetary base or 12% of the collection of the last 12 months) and profit transfers.