Here is some interesting facts which show how Argentine economy compares well in a global context.
Information from Wikipedia
Graph Compares economic performance of Argentina (100 = Latin American average GDP per capita PPP)
Argentina is one of the world’s major agricultural producers, ranking among the top producers and, in most of the following, exporters of beef, citrus fruit, grapes, honey, maize, sorghum, soybeans, squash, sunflower seeds, wheat, and yerba mate. Agriculture accounted for 7.5% of GDP in 2009, and around one fifth of all exports (not including processed food and feed, which are another third). Commercial harvests reached 103 million tons in 2010, of which over 54 million were oilseeds (mainly soy and sunflower), and over 46 million were cereals (mainly maize, wheat, and sorghum). Soy and its byproducts, mainly animal feed and vegetable oils, are major export commodities with one fourth of the total; cereals added another 7%. Cattle-raising is also a major industry, though mostly for domestic consumption; beef, leather and dairy were 5% of total exports. Sheep-raising and wool are important in Patagonia, though these activities have declined by half since 1990. Fruits and vegetables made up 4% of exports: apples and pears in the Río Negro valley; rice, oranges and other citrus in the northwest and Mesopotamia; grapes and strawberries in Cuyo (the west), and berries in the far south. Cotton and tobacco are major crops in the Gran Chaco, sugarcane and chile peppers in the northwest, and olives and garlic in the west. Yerba mate tea (Misiones), tomatoes (Salta) and peaches (Mendoza) are grown for domestic consumption.
Argentina is the world’s fifth-largest wine producer, and fine wine production has taken major leaps in quality. A growing export, total viticulture potential is far from having been met. Mendoza is the largest wine region, followed by San Juan.
Argentine fisheries bring in about a million tons of catch annually, and are centered around Argentine hake which makes up 50% of the catch, pollack, squid and centolla crab. Forestry has long history in every Argentine region, apart from the pampas, accounting for almost 14 million m³ of roundwood harvests. Eucalyptus, pine, and elm (for cellulose) are all widely harvested, mainly for domestic furniture, as well as paper products (1.5 million tons). Fisheries and logging each account for 2% of exports.
Mining in Argentina:
Mining is a growing industry, increasing from 2% of GDP in 1980 to around 4% today. The northwest and San Juan Province are the main regions of activity. Coal is mined in Santa Cruz Province. Metals mined include copper, zinc, magnesium, sulfur, tungsten, uranium silver, and particularly, gold, whose production was boosted by recent investments from Barrick Gold in San Juan. Metal ore exports soared from US$ 200 million in 1996 to US$ 1.2 billion in 2004,[37] and to over US$ 3 billion in 2010.[8]Around 35 million m³ each of petroleum and petroleum fuels are produced, as well as 50 billion m³ of natural gas, making the nation self-sufficient in these staples, and generating around 10% of exports. The most important oil fields lie in Patagonia and Cuyo. A network of pipelines (next to Mexico’s, the second-longest in Latin America) send raw product to Bahía Blanca, center of the petrochemical industry, and to the La Plata-Buenos Aires-Rosario industrial belt.
Industry Manufacturing:
Industry is the nation’s largest single sector in the economy with 21% of GDP, and is well-integrated into Argentine agriculture, accounting for nearly two-thirds of exports in all, with half the nation’s industrial exports being agricultural in nature. Leading sectors by production value are: food processing, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, farming equipment and auto parts, iron, steel and aluminum, petroleum, as well as industrial machinery and home appliances. These latter include over three million big ticket items, as well as an array of electronics, kitchen appliances and cellular phones, among others.
Beverages are another significant sector, and Argentina has long been among the top five wine producing countries in the world, though in 2000, beer overtook wine production, and today leads by nearly two billion liters a year to one.
Other manufactured goods include textiles and leather, plastics and tires, forestry products, publishing, cement, glass and tobacco products. Nearly half the industries are based in and around Buenos Aires, although Córdoba, Rosario, and Ushuaia are also significant industrial centers. Construction permits nationwide covered nearly 20 million m² (215 million ft²) in 2007. The construction sector accounts for 6% of GDP, and two-thirds of the construction was for residential buildings. Argentina produces electricity in large part through well developed natural gas and hydroelectric resources. Nuclear energy is also of high importance, and the country is one of the largest producers and exporters, alongside Canada and Russia of cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope widely used in cancer therapy. en
Services
The service sector is the biggest contributor to total GDP, accounting for over 60%. Argentina enjoys a diversified service sector, which includes well-developed social, corporate, financial, insurance, real estate, transport, communication services, and tourism.The telecommunications sector has been growing at a fast pace, and the economy benefits from widespread access to mobile telephony (more than 75% of the population having access to mobile phones), Internet (more than 16 million people online), and broadband services. Regular telephone services with 9.5 million lines and mail services are robust .Exports and imports of services were US$12 billion each in 2009.
Business Process Outsourcing became the leading Argentine service export, and reached US$3 billion. Advertising revenues from contracts abroad were estimated at over US$1.2 billion.
Tourism is increasingly important and provided 8% of economic output (over US$25 billion) in 2008; over 80% of tourism sector activity is domestic.
Banking
Argentine banking, whose deposits exceeded US$90 billion in November 2010, developed around public sector banks, but is now dominated by the private sector. The private sector banks account for most of the 85 active institutions (4,000 branches) and holds nearly 60% of deposits and loans, and there are as many foreign-owned banks as local ones. The largest bank in Argentina by far, however, has long been the public Banco de la Nación Argentina. Not to be confused with the Central Bank, this institution now accounts for about a fourth of the total deposits and a seventh of its loan portfolio. During the 1990s, Argentina’s financial system was consolidated and strengthened. Deposits grew from less than US$15 billion in 1991 to over US$80 billion in 2000, while outstanding credit (70% of it to the private sector) tripled to nearly US$100 billion.
Credit in Argentina is still relatively tight. Lending to the private sector has been increasing 40% a year since 2004, and delinquencies are down to 3%. Still, credit outstanding is, in real terms, about a fifth less than in 2000, and as a percent of GDP (around 15%), quite low by international standards. The prime rate, which had hovered around 10% in the 1990s, hit 67% in 2002. Although it returned to normal levels quickly, inflation, and more recently, global instability have been affecting it again. The prime rate was over 20% for much of 2009, and 17% in the first half of 2010. Partly a function of this and past instability, Argentines have historically held more deposits overseas than domestically. The estimated US$140 billion in overseas accounts and investment exceeded the domestic monetary base (M3) by nearly 50% in 2009.
Tourism in Argentina.
The World Economic Forum estimated that, in 2008, tourism generated around US$25 billion in economic turnover, and employed 1.8 million. Tourism from abroad contributed US$ 4.3 billion, having become the third largest source of foreign exchange in 2004. Around 4.6 million foreign visitors arrived in 2007, yielding a positive balance vis-à-vis the number of Argentines traveling abroad. Argentines, who have long been active travelers within their own country, accounted for over 80%, and international tourism has also seen healthy growth (nearly doubling since 2001). Stagnant for over two decades, domestic travel increased strongly in the last few years, and visitors are flocking to a country seen as affordable, exceptionally diverse, and safe. INDEC recorded 2.3 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2007 (a 12% increase), at the Ministro Pistarini International Airport, alone (around half the total); of these, 26 % arrived from Brazil, 25 % from Europe, 14 % from the United States and Canada, 8 % from Chile, 19 % from the rest of the Western Hemisphere and 8 % from the rest of the World.
Trade and investment
Foreign trade of Argentina . Argentine exports are fairly well diversified. However, although agricultural raw materials were 20% of the total exports in 2010, agricultural goods including processed foods still account for over 50% of exports. Soy products alone (soybeans, vegetable oil) account for almost one fourth of the total. Cereals, mostly maize and wheat, which were Argentina’s leading export during much of the twentieth century, make up less than one tenth now. Industrial goods today account for over a third of Argentine exports. The country exported 448,000 motor vehicles in 2010, mostly to Brazil. Motor vehicles and auto parts are the leading industrial export, about 10% of the industrial exports. Chemicals, steel, aluminum, machinery, and plastics account for most of the remaining industrial exports.A net energy importer until 1981, Argentina’s fuel exports began increasing rapidly in the early 1990s and today account for about an eighth of the total. Refined fuels make up about half. Exports of crude petroleum and natural gas have recently been about around US$3 billion a year. Argentine imports have historically been dominated by the need for industrial and technological supplies, machinery, and parts, which altogether amounted to US$38 billion in 2010, two-thirds of the total imports. Consumer goods including motor vehicles make up most of the rest. Trade in services, historically in deficit for Argentina, is currently balanced at around US$12 billion each way.
Direct investment in Argentina by the U.S. is mainly in telecommunications, energy, financial services, chemicals, food processing, and vehicle manufacturing. The U.S. direct investment in Argentina approached $16 billion at the end of 1999, according to the embassy estimates. Investments from Canada, Europe, Chile, and other countries have also been significant. In all, foreign nationals hold around US$80 billion in direct investment. Brazil has, since 2000, also became an important investor in Argentine assets and Spanish companies in particular have entered the Argentine market aggressively, with major investments in the petroleum and gas, telecommunications, banking, and retail sectors. Several bilateral agreements play an important role in promoting U.S. private investment. Argentina has an Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) agreement and an active program with the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Under the 1994 U.S.-Argentina Bilateral Investment Treaty, U.S. investors enjoy national treatment in all sectors except shipbuilding, fishing, nuclear-power generation, and uranium production. The treaty allows for international arbitration of investment disputes.Argentina attracted $3.4 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2006; as a percent of GDP, this FDI volume was below the Latin American average. A considerable improvement was recorded in 2007, however, when foreign nationals invested US$6.3 billion. This figure, despite an adverse international climate, remained around US$5 billion in 2009.
Energy
The electricity sector in Argentina constitutes the third largest power market in Latin America. It relies mostly on thermal generation (54% of installed capacity) and hydropower generation (41%), with new renewable energy technologies barely exploited. The country still has a large untapped hydroelectric potential. However, the prevailing natural gas-fired thermal generation is at risk due to the uncertainty about future gas supply. Faced with rising electricity demand (over 6% annually) and declining reserve margins, the government of Argentina is in the process of commissioning large projects, both in the generation and transmission sectors. To keep up with rising demand, it is estimated that about 1,000 MW of new generation capacity are needed each year. An important number of these projects are being financed by the government through trust funds, while independent private initiative is still limited as it has not fully recovered yet from the effects of the Argentine economic crisis.The electricity sector was unbundled in generation, transmission and distribution by the reforms carried out in the early 1990s. Generation occurs in a competitive and mostly liberalized market in which 75% of the generation capacity is owned by private utilities. In contrast, the transmission and distribution sectors are highly regulated and much less competitive than generation.
Infrastructure
Transportation in Argentina’s transport infrastructure is relatively advanced. There are over 230,000 km (144,000 mi) of roads (not including private rural roads) of which 72,000 km (45,000 mi) are paved and 1,575 km (980 mi) are expressways, many of which are privatized tollways. Having doubled in length in recent years, multilane expressways now connect several major cities with more under construction. Expressways are, however, currently inadequate to deal with local traffic, as 9.5 million motor vehicles are registered nationally as of 2009 (240 per 1000 population).The railway network has a total length of 34,059 km (21,170 mi). After decades of declining service and inadequate maintenance, most intercity passenger services shut down in 1992 when the rail company was privatized, and thousands of kilometers of track (excluding the above total) are now in disuse. Metropolitan rail services in and around Buenos Aires remained in great demand, however, owing in part to their easy access to the Buenos Aires subway, and intercity rail services are currently being reactivated along numerous lines.Inaugurated in 1913, the Buenos Aires Metro was the first subway system built in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere. It is no longer the most extensive in South America; but, its 52.3 km (32.5 mi) of track carry nearly a million passengers daily. Argentina has around 11,000 km (6,835 mi) of navigable waterways, and these carry more cargo than do the country’s freight railways. This includes an extensive network of canals, though Argentina is blessed with ample natural waterways, as well; the most significant among these being the Río de la Plata, Paraná, Uruguay, Río Negro and Paraguay rivers.Aerolíneas Argentinas is the country’s main airline, providing both extensive domestic and international service. Austral Líneas Aéreas is Aerolíneas Argentinas’ subsidiary, with a route system that covers almost all of the country. LADE is a military-run commercial airline that flies extensive domestic services.
The Gateway Team – When You are Serious About Property
www.gatewaytosouthamerica.com
/1.png)
