The Government is putting the focus on foreign trade. It has been doing this through various measures: it modified part of the Non-Automatic Licensing system, added 300 positions to the list and even began to ask importers to report, in detail, what they plan to bring from abroad from now until 2022 .
That is not all: the Government also plans to implement a sort of "scoring" of importing companies, with a clear objective: to be able to separate "healthy" operators from "suspects".
This idea was transmitted by the Industry Secretary, Ariel Schale, to the authorities of the Chamber of Importers, in the framework of a meeting where they discussed the scope of the latest measures.
As you could know iProfessional, the objective of that Secretariat is to have a detailed mapping of the flow of operations, company by company. Basically because they detected suspicious movements by various firms.
The idea, then, would be to move forward with a refinement of the importers' registry, in order to make it transparent.
Four key points
During the meeting with officials, CIRA raised four topics:
1. Shortening of the LNA
The businessmen warned that, in practice, all imports from Asia could be complicated, because from the time the license is approved until the production order is sent, the order is assembled and shipped and arrives in Argentina, quietly the deadline may be higher.
On this point, Schale was reassured: "He confirmed that the LNA will be granted for 90 days, but when they expire, they will be renewed for another 90 days, so in practice it is as if they returned to 180," they explained. to this medium.
2. LNA tolerance level
From the new regulations, importers will have less margin to be wrong about the price they declare for the merchandise.
It happens that the "tolerance" in terms of the unit FOB value was reduced in two points: the accepted difference between what was declared in the Comprehensive Import Monitoring System (SIMI) to manage LNAs and the value declared in the import destination applications for consumption, when the merchandise is nationalized.
The problem was that the regulations reached all LNAs, even those that had been previously requested. Following the complaint, the LNAs that were managed prior to the measure will continue to have prior tolerance margins.
3. Central Bank limitations
The delegation of importers also brought to the table an order with which they have been coming for several months, even since the previous management.
The regulation that reveals the entrepreneurs is communication 6818, which was published by the entity when it was chaired by Guido Sandleris and which regulated access to the exchange market for import payments.
The main complaint is related to the fact that the entity, now chaired by Miguel Pesce, requires about 90 days to demonstrate the registration of customs entry from the date of access to the exchange market. This, they say, is holding back imports from the most distant markets.
"We presented the difficulties to him, Schale listened and said that it was a matter for the Central Bank, but he listened to our problem," said the source.
4. Foreign Trade Projections
As noted, the Government is requesting chambers, large companies and SMEs to present a foreign trade plan until 2022, with projections related to employment, investments, production, sales in the domestic market, exports and, what more importantly, imports.
There, companies must record - still without knowing if the economy is going to grow or not - how much they expect to buy abroad, for what values and what type of products. And, to make the requirements more complex, they must disaggregate that same information by quarter (see note: “An impossible mission ?: this is the complicated Excel that companies that want to import have to complete“).
In this context, the sources indicated that "we left the officials a letter with doubts. They told us that they were going to analyze them and that they were going to give us an answer, with which we see that there are paths for dialogue. That is very positive. "
Some of the doubts that exist in the environment, not exclusive to CIRA, but from companies consulted by iProfessional, have to do with the concern that the information that is dumped in that file is binding.
In other words, what will happen to a firm that sets aside an amount of purchases abroad for 2020 similar to that of the recessive 2019 and then ends up having to import more? Will there be room to negotiate an increase if the technicians have already approved a "budget" for foreign trade?
That is just one of the unknowns that, for now, have no answer in the private sphere.
SOURCE: iProfesional https://www.iprofesional.com/comex/307599-dolar-banco-afip-Control-de-importaciones-Gobierno-sale-a-la-caza-de-empresas-fantasma
By Juan Diego Wasilevsky