The current president pro tempore of the Central Region, the governor of Santa Fe, Maximiliano Pullaro, received this Tuesday his counterparts from Córdoba, Martín Llaryora, and Entre Ríos, Rogelio Frigerio. The aim of the meeting was to analyse the situation of the agricultural sector. After the meeting, held at the government headquarters in Rosario, Pullaro said: "According to the tax cuts that the president has pledged to carry out, the next tax to be lowered by the national government must be directly associated with the countryside and have to be withholding taxes".
He added: "The countryside can no longer cope at the moment, and we have to realise that if urgent measures are not taken, the countryside is going to collapse. This will have a strong and negative impact on each of our provinces. The impact of withholding taxes in the Central Region is 70% of what is collected by this tax, because these three provinces are the ones that produce the most in Argentina.
In this context, the governor of Santa Fe mentioned "more numbers to illustrate the contributions of this sector that works so hard. The agricultural producer does not take the money outside, but invests in technology, machinery and in the wheel of the economy, and at this moment he can't give any more. With the Minister of Economy, we calculated how much our province has contributed in terms of equipment values: in the last six years, the province of Santa Fe has contributed 22,000 combine harvesters and 150,000 tractors through national government withholdings".
Investing in rural infrastructure
Pullaro went on to explain that "at this time we must support the countryside. We are willing to do our part, even though our tax burden is extremely low. The province of Santa Fe last year, in terms of rural property tax, collected 14 million dollars only and put 343 million dollars in policies for the countryside and product sectors. In other words, more than 22 times more. They cannot tell us that the problem of fiscal pressure is due to the taxes that the provinces collect".
"Likewise, each of the provinces of the Central Region is committed to investing 100% of the resources that come from the countryside in rural infrastructure. The Central Region is the countryside and industry, it has to do with the collective identity of each of our peoples. That is why in this critical moment of the Argentine Republic we ask you to look at this productive interior", Pullaro concluded.
Engine of development
For his part, Llaryora said: "We must react before it is too late. We have to understand that the countryside has helped Argentina all these years, it has collaborated with the country. But today, international, climatic and financial conditions mean that the countryside can no longer cope, and if we don't have a favourable climate, many of our producers will go bankrupt. So the measures we are taking are not enough to get out of this crisis because we do not have more measures, because most of them are the retentions".
Finally, the governor of Entre Ríos acknowledged that "these meetings are decisive for us" and commented that "we discussed various issues, but the crisis in the agricultural sector was one of the most important ones we dealt with. We asked the national government for the possibility of urgently reducing the tax burden on the sector, which is the driving force behind Argentina's development. The national government's tax burden on the countryside exceeds 66%, while in the case of the provinces it is less than 5%.
Also participating in the activity, on behalf of the province of Santa Fe, were the ministers of Productive Development, Gustavo Puccini, of Economy, Pablo Olivares, and of Government and Public Innovation, Fabián Bastia, and the representative of the Central Region for Santa Fe, Claudia Giaccone; on behalf of Córdoba: the Ministers of Infrastructure and Public Services, Fabián López; the Secretary of Regional Integration and International Relations, Juan Carlos Massei, and the legislator Miguel Siciliano; on behalf of Entre Ríos: the Minister of Government and Labour, Manuel Troncoso; the Secretaries of Budget and Finance, Uriel Brupbacher, and of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Raúl Boc Ho, and the President of the Ente Región Centro e Integración Regional, Jorge Chemes.
