Page 7 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, AUGUST 2021 (English)

with more or less problems; whether it will enjoy more or less governability.
The Current Congress
In Congress, the current composition of the Senate is very favourable for the Government of President Alberto Fernandez. In that Chamber, the Frente de Todos has a majority of 41 out of 72 senators, although it does not have the two thirds necessary to, for example, reach an agreement on the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court of Justice or the Attorney General of the Nation, which is the head of the federal prosecutors.
The Chamber of Deputies is the most complicated scenario for the Fernandez Administration, because it does not have two thirds, and it does not have a majority either. In that entity, the ruling party has 46,3 percent of the seats (not 57 percent, as in the Senate), that is, it needs help in the opposition even to be able to start the sessions: it has 119 deputies and the quorum is achieved with 129.
Juntos por el Cambio,the main opposition party, has 44,7 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies (115 out of 257), so that the ruling party achieves a quorum thanks to opponents from other spaces, which add up to the remaining nine percent.
On July 24th, the deadline for the presentation of the lists of candidates before the party electoral boards for the next elections in Argentina expired. Several forces delivered more than one list, which means that they will confront each other internally in the September 12th, the rst stage of this sequence of elections that culminates in November. The Gender Parity Law establishes that the lists -both of pre-candidates and of candidates for deputy and senator of the Nation- must be made up of a woman and a man, or vice versa, alternately and consecutively. This added complexity to payroll setup.
Economic Measures
Winning these mid-term elections constitutes a strong motivation, for which the Head of Government made a change of cabinet and in parallel approved a set of measures to enchant the middle class, which will be key in the electoral result of two more months and also on its previous scale, the primaries on September 12th.
Regarding the rst, President Alberto Fernández sought to maintain balance in the government coalition and strengthen his electoral options for the renewal of legislative seats. The assumption of former Kirchner Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana as the new Defence Minister and Mayor Juan Zabaleta in Social Development once again highlight the distribution of power between the Head of State and Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Also, among the new economic provisions is an extraordinary bonus of around USD $50 to retirees; the granting of soft loans to self-employed workers; a tax cut on more than a million employees and the reopening of wage negotiations by sectors. All this will allow Argentines to recover part of the real salary, which today is 20 percent below 2017, but at the cost of a sharp increase in the scal de cit.
Consumption and Rates Interest
The Government is expected to encourage consumption, which is essential for economic take-o ; thus, term credit is being stimulated, such as the acquisition of electrical appliances in up to 30 xed instalments. After years of repeated decline, and thanks to measures like these, the highest demand for goods and services recovered in July for the rst time, with an increase of 1,7 percent, according to the consultancy Scentia. Even so, the accumulated gure for 2021 shows a negative balance of -6,2 percent.
On the other hand, the Senate authorized the entry into force of three
bills, two related to the limitation of interest rates in general for arrears and one related to the approval, by the Executive, of 33 appointment of judges, prosecutors and defenders. Currently, service companies are authorized to apply late payment rates of 50 percent above the rate determined by Banco Nacion, which ranges from 36 to 38 percent.
The second project is based on the limitation of interest rates for late payment speci cally in the payment of credit cards. The 10th was also imposed as the deadline for the rst due date of the credit card payment and if the consumer is a woman, the interest rate will be reduced by 10 percent.
Along with the above, the Government hopes to help the most vulnerable populations. In 2020, poverty reached 42 percent, the highest gure since the end of the 2001 crisis. After weeks of street demonstrations by like-minded and opposition social movements, the Government approved a large increase in funds for the Ministry of Development Social, on which the main State subsidies depend.
Hydrocarbon Investments
Likewise, the Government announced that it will send to Congress in the coming days the draft Law for the Promotion of Hydrocarbon Investments that includes incentives, based on greater export authorizations and the availability of foreign currency, for initiatives that are faced in all basins that ensure an incremental oil and gas production. It is a law with a federal perspective and with incentives for the speci city of each of the country’s areas. O icial sources reported that the project’s articles are already at the disposal of President Alberto Fernandez with the details of a new investment promotion regime for the next 20 years.
The Economic Crisis