Concerned about the strength that Asian manufacturers are taking, the Association of Argentine Factories Electronics Terminals (Afarte) will ask the Ministry of Industry for a series of licenses to control the entry of air conditioners. This is aimed at reducing the level of imports from Southeast Asia; In this regard, the president of Afarte, Alejandro Mayoral, told a well-known Argentine media that "the substitution of national production by imports of air conditioners highlights a crisis situation that we must face with greater harmony with the Ministry of Industry and the implementation of new measures." Mayoral also explained that "there is a phenomenon of substitution", in fact between January and May 2008, the Argentine production of air conditioners was 276,674 units when the total figure for 2007 was 1,017,097 equipment. In addition, Mayoral said that there is a loss of competitiveness that allows the advancement of Asian goods.
However, the air conditioning industry is not the only one affected by this phenomenon in Argentina, according to the portal Iprofesional.com in the face of the decrease in consumption in the United States and Europe, an excess of stock of goods is being presented, so it is possible that Latin America becomes a recipient of products at very low prices from Asian countries. ticos.
Faced with this phenomenon, the General Directorate of Customs has already begun to take measures to protect local producers from unfair competition. In this sense, one of the main measures is the implementation of a package of criterion values, that is, a minimum entry price of around 21,600 products from abroad will be established.
Exports from countries such as China, Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam, are the ones that most concern the Argentine authorities due to the high volume of production they have, especially in the case of China.
That is why Argentine businessmen appreciate the measure, for example the president of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), Juan Carlos Lascurain, said that the diversion of trade to Argentina could do very great damage to entire value chains.
For his part, the manager of the Association of Argentine Component Factories (AFAC), Juan Cantarella, indicated that the possibility of Chinese products arriving at prices with which it cannot compete was worrying.
