Argentina increases its non-industrialized soybean exports

Despite the historic agreement reached with China, which could boost the soybean meal export to the Asian country, a heavy dispute continues between the oilseed crushing industry and the Government, since the latter ended with the historic export tax gap between the raw material (the bean) and the byproducts (the meal and the oil).

This circumstance added to the trade dispute between China and the US has boosted the soybean export this year. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries it foresees that between August and October around 3.69 MMT of the bean would be shipped this year, versus 2.49 MMT in the same period of 2016, 2.42 MMT in 2017 (when soybean harvests were similar to the last campaign) and 0.58 MMT in 2018 (when a severe drought cut 30% the production).

This means that the “primarization” (a neologism to define the lack of industrial-value in the exports) increased an average of 50% into respect 2016 and 2017.

“This situation put at risk hundreds of labor places in the largest export cluster and major dollars generator in Argentina”, a source from the industry told to eFarmNewsAr.com. “It’s necessary to reverse this situation as soon as possible, eliminating the fiscal punishment of applying more duties to the add-value products”, he added.

A few days ago, Aceitera General Deheza executive Miguel Acevedo, said that “this August we had a monthly record of soybean exports. We should have the same export tax for the soybean than for the byproducts, but when we do the numbers it results that we (the industrials) are paying more taxes for the meal or the oil than for the bean”.