Argentina's new president cuts taxes on farms, manufacturing

Argentina's new president cuts taxes on farms, manufacturing

Argentina's conservative new president, Mauricio Macri, got down to business on Monday by eliminating or cutting a string of taxes on agricultural and industrial exports, seeking to kick-start Latin America's third-largest economy.

Posted 15 Dec 2015 08:02
Updated 15 Dec 2015 08:21

BUENOS AIRES: Argentina's conservative new president, Mauricio Macri, got down to business on Monday (Dec 14) by eliminating or cutting a string of taxes on agricultural and industrial exports, seeking to kick-start Latin America's third-largest economy.

Macri, whose inauguration on Thursday ended more than a decade of left-wing rule, had promised on the campaign trail to slash the South American farming giant's steep taxes on agricultural exports, which triggered major protests by producers against former president Cristina Kirchner.

He fulfilled that promise at a meeting with farmers in the heart of the Argentine breadbasket, announcing the end of taxes on wheat, corn and sorghum exports and a tax cut on soybean exports, from 35 per cent to 30 per cent.

Then he met with industrialists to announce an end to the five-per cent tax on their exports, as well. "Let's not think of things in terms of 'farms versus industry,'" he told farmers in the town of Pergamino, in the heart of the fertile plains known as the Pampas. "It's farms and industry, farms and the country. Without farms, the country can't survive."

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