• Empresas.Argentina invokes "food sovereignty" to expropriate a large agro-export company
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After announcing the expropriation of one of the country's main agricultural companies on Monday, the Argentine government partially reversed this Thursday: it continues to intervene in the company, but is open to "listening to overcoming alternatives" that allow it not to reach nationalization.

President Alberto Fernández "is willing to listen to overcoming alternatives to expropriation," said Santa Fe Governor Omar Perotti, who is directly affected by the future of Vicentín, the company in question, with 7,000 employees, since the headquarters Central is in your province. Fernández's goal, added Perotti, "is to rescue the company," which has debts of $ 1.3 billion.

"I think the departure of the company must come from the private sector," said the owner and CEO of Vicentín, Sergio Nardelli, before entering the meeting with Fernández. Although there was no information from the national government, Perotti's statements confirm that the Peronist president paused the extreme idea of ​​an expropriation.

Vicentín is the main Argentine oilseed milling company, and that is saying a lot in one of the largest soybean producers worldwide. It is also the largest biodiesel producer in the country, something that partly explains why the oil company YPF takes control of the company. Kirchnerism (and Peronism in general) have a long history of expropriations, also of privatizations and re-nationalizations. This is the case of YPF and Aerolineas Argentinas, privatized by the Peronist Carlos Menem in the 1990s and nationalized by the Peronist Cristina Kirchner, today Fernández's vice president, a little more than a decade later.

In a hypersensitive and burdened Argentina in the face of an economic crisis that could reach unknown levels amid the Covid-19 pandemic, opponents of the Fernández government hoisted this week a slogan: "Venezuelization". Fernández, who was exhausted, irritated and hesitant on Monday when making the announcement, reacted ensuring the decisions are his and not his vice president's: "I say this publicly to finish fanning this black story that Cristina challenges me and beats me two screaming to do what I don't want to do. That doesn't exist and I wouldn't allow that to exist. "

The auditors appointed by the Fernández government have already entered the company after two days when Avellaneda, the headquarters town of Vicentín, revolted and went out onto the streets en masse to show their opposition to the measure, which the government partially justified as a first step to ensure a supposed "food sovereignty".

Fernández did not ignore that signal, nor the cacerolazos that were heard on Wednesday in Buenos Aires: if in Monday's announcement he had Anabel Fernández Sagasti, a senator who represents Cristina's most radical thinking, this time he received the representatives of the company along with its closest officials, in addition to the Minister of Agriculture, who on Monday was not part of the matter.

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Know more

  • Argentina
  • Luis Planas
  • Alberto Fernández

EmpresasArgentina invokes "food sovereignty" to expropriate a large agro-export company

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