Back in early 2017, when in the economic agenda the dollar and the crisis did not occupy the preponderant place they have today, the Government embarked on a plan.
Internally it was baptized as the "Revolution of the Notebooks". What was it? Basically, in the elimination of the tariff of 35% for the import of laptops, measurement that began to govern the 1 of April of that year.
The reasoning used by officials at that time was in the following line: they considered that these teams were expensive in Argentina, given that here a consumer had to pay close to 50% more than in other markets in the region, such as Chile.
This was seen by Cambio as a great barrier that hindered access to technology and one of the many variables that affected the level of competitiveness of industries and service companies.
"Families, SMEs and entrepreneurs need computers to study, grow and develop, the State must be present to guarantee access to technology and create more employment, which is the central objective to go towards zero poverty," said Francisco Cabrera , who at that time was in charge of the Ministry of Production.
The results, which in the short term seemed to give the reason to the Government, today show a totally different picture.
On the one hand, from the sector estimate that the elimination of taxes on imports caused the automatic loss of about 6,000 jobs dedicated to the production of components and the assembly of laptops in the country.
In addition, the prices, one of the main focuses that the Government intended to attack, far from being contained, ended up falling apart, hand in hand with the jump of the dollar and an unrestrained inflationary process.
To this was added that, far from materializing the so-called "Revolution of the Notebooks", Argentina today has one of the poorest offers of the last decade in terms of availability of brands and models.
The current situation is only comparable to the times when Kirchnerism had turned the tap on imports and the gondolas were almost empty.
"Nothing the government proposed for this segment ended up being fulfilled, and I am categorical: each and every one of the objectives that they wanted to achieve were not achieved," he told iProUp and under strict off the record a senior manager of one of the large companies that leads the production of technology in Tierra del Fuego.
Strong drop in sales
The moment of splendor for the island had taken place in 2013, when in the plants of Río Grande and Ushuaia, 1.3 million laptops were produced, a figure that also had to be added what companies generated outside of this polo and that were installed in Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, Rosario and Cordoba.
It was at the end of 2016 when the Government announced that its intention was to free the market and that it was going to remove the protection barrier that the import tariff generated. And the debacle began.
BGH, Olivetti, Pc Arts and CX were some of the companies that had to redefine their business strategy as soon as Cambiemos opened the tap to foreign competition.
There is a caveat: in 2017, with an economy that grew by 2.9%, the market seemed to respond positively. In total, 557,000 laptops were sold that year, 198,000 more than in 2016, marking a jump of 55%.
However, the subsequent cimbronazo generated by the dollar, the fall in employment and consumption caused a notable slump in demand. According to data accessed by iProUP:
- In 2018, 457,000 equipment was sold, 100,000 units less than in 2017 (18% decrease).
- But most worrying was undoubtedly the beginning of 2019: only 39,200 notebooks were sold, a collapse of 60% compared to the previous year (95,000 units)
Although the shrinkage effect that the market is suffering is largely due to the economic crisis and devaluation, statistics show that the goal of generating a flood of sales was not fulfilled. Quite the contrary.
Prices: up
The other front that sought to attack the government was the high domestic prices that were recorded compared to other neighborhood markets.
"Our north is competitiveness, Argentina is the country in the region where computers are more expensive because of lack of competition, that cost is paid by all citizens," said the then Secretary of Commerce, Miguel Braun.
However, by crossing the data provided by consultant GfK and measuring the evolution of the prices since the beginning of 2017, it is verified that the notebooks led the rises in the technological category.
"Since the lowering of tariffs to technology products, the prices of cell phones, televisions and air conditioning equipment have risen significantly less than the exchange rate, while in the case of laptops the increase has been higher", is the conclusion of an internal report circulating these days among companies in Tierra del Fuego.
As can be seen in the following graph, between January 2017 and December 2018, laptops soared in pesos, with a rise of 123%, just 11 points below the rise in the greenback.
In addition, this rise was 78 points above the increase in prices experienced by air conditioning equipment, about 73 points higher than the evolution of televisions and 20 points more than cell phones.
To aggravate the outlook, so far this year, the increases intensified and this is causing the gap with respect to countries that the Government took at the time as a reference -Chile, basically- is being re-expanded, after which the gap has practically reached 0%.
As an example:
- An HP brand notebook with Intel Pentium processor, 500 GB disk and 4 GB of memory is sold in one of the three major chains in the country at a value equivalent to US $ 566. A model with the same characteristics in Falabella Chile is being offered for US $ 470. So the local price is 20% higher.
-In the case of an Acer Intel Celeron with the same capacity as the previous model, it costs about US $ 413 in Buenos Aires. This is 30% more than the value in the trans-Andean capital.
-Mayor is the difference if you take an HP with Intel Core i3 processor and 20 GB of memory: in Argentina you have to pay the equivalent of US $ 650, almost 40% more than in Ripley Stores.
Why does this happen? The report notes that "the national production of electronics allows prices to decouple and grow to a lesser extent than the exchange rate and inflation".
In dialogue with iProUP, the commercial manager of one of the companies that operates in the fueguino pole details that "when the product arrives 100% imported, the impact of the dollar is much more direct: when the currency rises, the value in pesos moves almost in the same proportion. "
"On the other hand, when you have an armed structure with local costs, you can mitigate a little more the effect of the exchange rate, there are variables such as logistics or labor costs that are logically adjusted, but at a slower pace and even to a lesser extent "he adds.
The manager states that when they produced equipment in the south, about the price at which they sold to retailers, 60% was explained by fully dollarized costs. The rest could serve as a "cushion" to mitigate the impact.
In addition, the director adds that, as there were several companies bidding to sell in the market, with investments and armed structures, there was a natural competition: "This is what we are seeing today with the TV business. financial cost is high and we can not afford to accumulate stocks, some profitability is resigned to lower prices, just to activate a little more demand. "
Very poor offer
Selling less can be a factor attributable to the economic crisis. But this does not serve to explain that there is a very poor supply of alternatives, considering that in other categories the options are much broader.
To put it in context, in the three main electro chains in the country, no more than six brands are offered and there are no more than 19 portable models.
In contrast, in other areas such as refrigerators, consumers have 98 teams to choose from. Televisions? In the ecommerce of one of the big chains there are 60 alternatives.
In the cell segment, a single retailer can offer more than 100 options. And in air conditioners, easily exceed 40 models.
This panorama is a clear contrast to what they promised from the Government, when they formalized the measure they said that they would "improve the quality of computers" and that this would "increase the productivity of thousands of companies in the country".
The official measure, the businessmen argue, was not free: the elimination of tariffs for information technology led to the loss of 6,000 jobs, both direct and indirect, according to estimates by CAMOCA, an entity that brings together brands that operate outside the Fueguino area. .
According to the report accessed iProUP, "the measure resulted in loss of installed capacity, industrial know how, qualified employment and contracts with global brands."
This was, in fact, what happened in the south of the country: the plants had to deactivate their assembly lines and concentrate their efforts on cell phones, televisions and air conditioning equipment.
Meanwhile, many of the SMEs installed in other provinces, such as Buenos Aires or Santa Fe, had no choice but to shrink and return to their "sources", that is, to a role of importers or merchants.
"There was an electronics industry that was affected and this is a setback, we had made a huge investment in a line of cutting-edge robotics that was capable of producing motherboards, in a building that even had controlled temperature and humidity," they recalled. from the firm Air Computers, which produced CX brand equipment.
However, with the Government's plan, all that machinery, almost new, had to be put up for sale.
Paradoxes facing macrismo: trying to flood the market with cheap laptops, the crisis, the dollar and changes in the market ended up causing a shortage reminiscent of the times when the Kirchner made great efforts to close imports.
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