The government pursues the dream of “total excel” to know in detail the information of the companies

In two official offices yesterday, perhaps simultaneously, these two scenes took place. In one, via zoom, President Alberto Fernández and Minister of Economy Martín Guzmán attempted to seduce to large investment funds so that “Fix your gaze on Argentina”. The interlocutors who heard Fernández and Guzmán from different parts of the world are manipulating assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars. For some reason more than understandable, today they are reluctant to invest a millionth of those dollars in this land of opportunity.

In another official office, in the internal trade secretariat headed by Paula Español, The last points were given yesterday to the resolution creating the Information System for the implementation of economic reactivation policies (SIPRE), on which the officials of this agency intend to focus. sensitive information of businesses, such as sales, purchases, stocks, prices.

Separate paragraph, the devotion to grandiose acronyms, They promise a future of efficiency that is rarely proven in fact.

The truth is that the aspiration for a “Total Excel” It is supplemented by the claim to want to know the entire cost structure of companies, and is completed by the intention of AFIP to know in advance the tax planning of companies, a requirement which is legally contested by several companies.

Internal trade decisions make, if you will, make sense in an economy where businesses they must ask permission to receive a prize. And although they don’t say so explicitly, they stem from the dominant thought within government: inflation – the root of these initiatives – it is more the fault of companies than of economic decisions.

Minister Martín Guzmán tried to dilute this key idea, arguing that inflation is multicausal although solving it is “Everyone’s Responsibility”. It’s an idea that a significant part of the Frente de Todos disagrees with.

This is the part of the ruling alliance that moves comfortably in the range that thinks that exporting food is a curse even those who like to put on their bibs to photograph themselves while looking at the prices on the supermarket shelves. .

To such an action, such a reaction. Foreign capital has long forgotten Argentina. Bugle published a few weeks ago the evolution of foreign direct investment in Argentina, on the basis of the periodic reports of the CEPALC. We can clearly see that the 25 to 30% who, at the end of the last century, Argentina captured of the total dollars that entered the region, today it is less than 5%.

On the other hand, domestic trade officials know they will receive sensitive information and promise confidentiality. The word confidentiality is devalued more than the peso. In recent times, various lists have emerged with information that shouldn’t have been made public: people who have engaged in money laundering, companies who have bought dollars, investors who have made future transactions in dollars, taxpayers who have adhered to such and such a moratorium.

This is why the coincidence of the two scenes recounted at the beginning is above all contradictory. It seeks to attract investment, but those who dare to do so must accept that at some point they will be prevented from buying foreign currency or making profits abroad – some will call it a “flight” of capital. – or that they will not be able to touch their prices or, as we can see these days, the aliquots of certain taxes are modified.

It’s hard to seduce and fight capital at the same time