Аргентина

ARGENTINA

Argentina has experienced slow economic growth since the 1940s.

By the mid-1970s long-term growth declined noticeably, and in

the last half of the 1980s the country suffered its longest

period of stagnation in the century. Savings and investment

rates fell precipitously from the mid-1970s until 1989.

Argentines, responding to the unstable macroeconomic

environment, increasingly saved and invested abroad. Labor

productivity fell ang poverty worsened. This economic

performance was tranceable to chronic public sector deficits and

endemic inflation. Public sector deficits in the late 1970s

ranged from 10 to 14 percent of GDP, and in the early 1980s

surpassed IS percent of GDP. After the return to constitutional

democracy in 1983, public demands to control inflation were

translated into four successive stabilization programs. All

failed to eradicate inflation, and each ended in a more virulent

inflation than the one preceding it. The main reason for these

failures was the inability of the stabilization programs to

redress rapidly and permanently the public sector structural

deficit. Structural deficits emerged from the post-war

organization of the economy. Economic policy from the 1940s was

used to propagate rules and transfers favoring the interests of

private groups with access to power. By the early 1980s public

expenditures approached 40 percent of GDP. Unionized labor

benefitted from high wages, guaranteed employment, and rigid

rules governing hiring and dismissals. Industry benefitted from

highly protected markets, tax exemptions through special

promotion regimes, subsidized credit-or effective grants, as

many loans were not collected-subsidized inputs from public

enterprises, and high prices on sales to public enterprises.

Housing contractors and middleclass home buyers benefitted from

enormous public transfers through earmarked taxes and effective

grants through the Housing Bank. Tobacco growers, sugar growers,

the merchant marine, and other small interest groups enjoyed

special tax breaks. Consumers enjoyed below-cost tariffs from

public enterprise and lax collectioll practices. Provincial

governments could avail themselves of costless credit from the

provincial banks, which the central bank reimbursed. The

military enjoyed expanding budgets, especially over 1976-82, as

well as management perquisites in state companies they

controlled. By 1989 subsidies through the budget, tax

exemptions, agriculcural regulations, public enterprise tariffs,

and central bank rediscounts were estimated to amount to roughly

8 percent of GDP--the equivalent of some $8 billion. The growth

of the state and concomitant rents and subsidies, along with the

capital flight provoked by an inconsistent exchange rate policy,

were financed during the late 1970s largely by external

borrowing through the expanding Eurodollar market at low or even

negative real international interest rates. This permitted the

government to run large deficits and sustain a revalued exchange

rate with relatively low levels of inflation in the second half

of the 1970s. An abrupt end to voluntary foreign commercial

credit in the early 1980s and the sudden rise in real

international interest rates provoked a financial collapse and

placed additional pressure on public finances. The situation was

complicated by the South Atlantic War. The loss of external

finance and lack of adjustment meant the treasury had to resort

to increased inflationary finance through monetary creation. The

private sector, in an effort to avoid the resulting inflation

tax, gradually withdrew its resources from the financial system

and reduced its real holdings of currency ; this, together with

the negative effects of inflation on real tax collections, made

Argentina's economy progressively more unstable in the 1980s.

Even though the deficit fell from near 20 percent of GDP in the

early 1980s to an average of about 10 percent over 1987-89, the

base for the inflation tax shrank even faster--efforts to reduce

the deficit were not fast or permanent enough to convince the

private sector that savings in domestic currency would not be

eroded by inflation. Inflation became high and unpredictable,

and the main impediment to the recovery of private savings and

investment. The decade ended with two episodes of hyperinflation

in 1989.

Post-1989 Structural Reforms

Tbe present administration took office in July 1989 during a

traumatic hyperinflation--July inflation alone was 200 percent.

This culminated a decade-long crisis in public finance. The new

team inherited weak public institutions accustomed to deficit

spending and with an institutionalized reliance on the inflation

tax. In addition, claims on state revenues were far greater than

its capacity to mobilize resources-in short, the Argentine state

was insolvent. The government undertook stabilization programs

in 1989 and 1990. Neither succeeded, principally because of the

intractability of the fiscal deficit. The first terminated in a

new hyperinflation at the end of 1989 and in early 1990. The

second lasted from March 1990 to December 1990 and ended in a

new inflationary outburst but, unlike the previous breakdowns,

the economy did not spin into hyperinflation. Instead, a new

fiscal package in February 1991 was sufficient to close the

remaining fiscal gap. This was followed by the April 1, 1991 Law

of Convertibility fixing the local currency to the dollar and

effectively proscribing money creation other than to buy net

foreign reserves. The convertibility program disciplines

monetary policy and limits the power of the government to

finance its deficit through inflation. The law markedly reduced

the foreign exchange rate risk to investors and the inflation

risk to business and labor--as long as the fiscal fundamentals

are in place to support it. The February 1991 program was able

to close the gap in large measure because the government's

sustained structural reform efforts had progressively improved

the foundations of public finance. The government had undertaken

difficult to reverse reforms in the legal framework,

institutions, and policies. These included institutional reforms

of the federal government, public enterprises, and

federal-provincial fiscal relations, and restructuring

liabilities with domestic and foreign creditors to adjust them

to serviceable levels. Other reforms have helped elicit

efficient private investment, notably trade, deregulation, and

financial sector reform.

Federal Government

The government undertook a major effort to improve revenues

through the implementation of a much-broad- ened and uniform

value added tax first to goods in February 1990, and later

extended to services in Novem- ber 1990. The government also

improved the efficiency of the tax administration in 1989,

establishing a control system for the largest taxpayers that

took effect in February 1991. The tax penalty law, adopted by

Con- gress in 1990, provided much needed sanctions for tax

non-compliance. The tax package of February 1991 improved the

quality of revenue mobilization substan- tially because it

eliminated export taxes, reduced pro- gressively during 1990 and

early 1991, deducted higher taxes on financial transactions from

the income/asset tax, and removed several minor taxes. In

December 1992 subsidies to industrial promotion were

substantially cut by replacing self-monitored tax deductions

with a tax bond program. These efforts cumulatively produced

dramatic rises in tax collections from the third quarter of 1991

on. The increase in value added tax collection allowed the

government to eliminate inefficient taxes, such as the fuel tax

and the stamp tax, in November 1992, and several specific sales

taxes in May 1993. Federal employment decreased from 671,000 to

284,000, including 103,000 layoffs and 284,000 teachers and

health workers transferred to provincial payrolls. This effort

was based on a ministerial reorganization that focused federal

activities on core objectives, and improvements in the civil

service system through