A decree published today provides for the elimination of export duties for meat products. The goal is for the withholdings made during 2023 to return to the profitability of the bovine and pork chain.
The Argentine government announced this Tuesday the elimination of export duties on products in the cow category and the pork and dairy chains, as well as the 25% reduction in withholdings for different beef and poultry chains, among others.
The measures, anticipated by President Javier Milei at the inauguration of the Rural Exhibition 2024, aim to give greater competitiveness and predictability to a strategic productive sector for the Argentine economy.
Decree 697/2024, published today in the Official Gazette, provides for the elimination of export duties for products in the cow category (except live animals). These products, whose main destination is international sales, were taxed more than US$60 million in withholdings during 2023, an amount that from now on returns to the profitability of the bovine chain.
The Decree also establishes the elimination of withholdings for products from the pork chain, in order to provide it with greater competitiveness and international projection for a product with high global demand.
Likewise, it provides for the definitive elimination of export duties for products of the dairy chain, a tax that ranges between 4.5% and 9% and which is currently temporarily suspended until June 2025.
"With its definitive elimination, the dairy industry processes will have greater predictability to grow in productivity and investments," says the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries on its website.
Finally, the Decree implements a 25% reduction in withholdings for all animal proteins, whose current rate is between 4.5% and 9%.
"Animal proteins constitute an added value in origin to our grains and have a massive federal impact, since sheep, poultry, cattle and the rest of the Argentine exportable species are produced in all the provinces of our country," indicates the entity.
In 2023 alone, the 25% of export duties paid by these categories amounted to more than USD 70 million. Based on these new measures, this amount returns to the productive chain and provides competitiveness to the transformation at origin.
"These provisions, which are part of a broader process of deregulation, lowering of tariffs on agricultural inputs, opening of international markets and simplification of procedures in trade control, aim to continue removing the weight of the State from the shoulders of agricultural production. , responsible for 1.2 million jobs and 63% of the total exported by Argentina," concludes the ministry statement.
