More foreign exchange restrictions for importers: fewer dollars are allowed to buy abroad

With his reservations Banco Central at its lowest level in 17 years and with a commitment of USD 750 million for the FMI at the door (ends August 4), the government has turned off the tap a little more for importers and reduced the quota that companies are allowed to buy abroad.

As complained by various companies that carry out imports on a monthly basis, the Federal Administration of Public Revenue (AFIP) revoked 25% of the approved dollar purchase amount pursuant to Financial Economic Capability (CEF).

The CEF, it must be remembered, determines the taxpayer’s purchasing power in dollars according to his affidavits, his charge amounts and other data provided by other agencies. “The objective of this indicator is to verify that the operations carried out by taxpayers comply with the financial capacity determined by the organization,” explained AFIP, although in practice it is the bar that shows how many pesos each business can allocate . in the dollar market to import through System of Imports of the Republic of Argentina (SIRA).

As the importing companies explained, although there were no changes to the declarations, the CEF system – calculated on the 26th of each month – began to approve much smaller amounts for your purchases abroad. Broadly, there is talk of a 25% drop, but some companies say their cuts have been bigger and others warn they will no longer be able to import directly.

The goal, of course, is to reduce the amount of dollars that go each month to pay for purchases abroad and thus prevent further declines in reserves. At the same time, AFIP seeks to accelerate the settlement of foreign currency – there are close to 3 billion dollars pending liquidation-, limiting the return benefit of VAT to exporters who do not carry out the dollar import process.

The first half of the year, as reported by National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec)exports of 33,509 million USD were recorded, while imports of 37,897 million USD were paid, which left a negative balance of 4,387 million USD, a very different value from the positive balance of 2,977 million USD recorded in the same period last year.

The change in scenario happened because exports fell by 24.5% while imports “only” fell by 8.5%.

This is not the first time that the national government has reduced the import quota of companies. At the beginning of last year several companies had denounced a cut in the values ​​approved by the CEF.

Without further ado, in that case a businessman selling bazaar items had explained infobae that his CEF had dropped from $1 billion to just $2 million per year (99.8% less). Another, from a different line of business, had seen a decline from $2.1 billion to $125 million per year (94% less).

Now, the reductions are around 25% in most cases, but voices from the business sector have assured that the cuts are significant enough to have a negative impact on the level of economic activity, due to the impending lack of inputs for production.

In any case, it is important to clarify that companies can appeal against the AFIP decision. “The formula and parameters taken into account during the monthly CEF assessment can be recalculated based on the availability of data derived from deficiencies or corrective statements made by the taxpayer himself. For this purpose, the taxpayer and/or the competent authority may request their reprocessing, the previous presentation of the originals and/or the corrective affidavits, so that they are taken into account in the new calculation,” the agency says.

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