He Indec released a statement this Thursday in which it had to clarify doubts about the data released this week on the evolution of economic activity. These threw a growth of 0.5% compared to Augustwhen all the numbers, the analyzes and the analysts They were waiting for confirmation that Argentina formally entered recessionthat is, it accumulated two consecutive quarters of economic decline.
From the statistical organization they saw in the need to technically argue whyin his words, “the trend recent EMAE (Monthly Estimator of Economic Activity), What was previously seen as negative, is now seen as positive.” (sic). The explanation would lie in a combination of methodological elements (which strangely, according to Indec, allow the data from previous months of the series to be “modified backwards”) and the growth of the “Financial Intermediation” sector that would compensate for the fall of the industry, to avoid the headline that Milei did not want: recession.
There are other headlines that, however, have a stronger impact. He factory closures and massive layoffs in well-known brand companies such as household appliances Whirlpoolthe pots Essenfrom the car lot Danaamong others, and even the departure of several firms from the country, generate more noise than any economic indicator. They are images that penetrate deeply and that, after two years of libertarian government, make sense of that idea of an economy that “would grow like a diver’s fart” if it opened its arms to greater demands from capital.
“Industricide” and the strange world of finance
The report published this Tuesday by Indec indicates that in September 2025, the monthly economic activity estimator (EMAE) registered a increase of 5.0% in the interannual comparison and 0.5% compared to August in the seasonally adjusted measurement. The sectors that grew the most in year-on-year terms were Financial intermediation (39.7% yoy) and the Fishing (58.2% ia)while the manufacturing industry had a drop of 1%.
When looking sectorally at the data of September compared to two years agoa very marked behavior is observed. On the one hand, Commerce, Industry and Constructionthree highly demanding sectors of the workforce, are below the levels of September 2023. The agricultural sector (agriculture, livestock, fishing and forestry) 5.5% higher, considering that it is contrasted against a year of historic drought. While Financial intermediation stands out with a jump in activity of 38.8%.
“As in other neoliberal experiments, With Milei, the Argentine economy shows two realities. Among the winning sectors, financial activity stands out (favored in multiple ways), the majority of public service provision (tariffs through) and a handful of primary export productions (under transnational control, once again considered the axis of the country’s insertion in the international division of labor),” explains the specialist. Martin Schorr.
“Among the losers are different sectors. On the one hand, many items linked to the public sector in the framework of a merciless adjustment. On the other, a significant number of items linked to the internal market, such as construction, commerce and industry. Regarding this last sector, the data are conclusive in indicating that an industrialicide is underway, much faster than what was experienced, for example, in the 1990s or during the Macri government. This is expressed in several records. eloquent: closure of companies, exit of foreign investments, “conversion” of industrial companies into marketers of imported products. The balance? destruction of critical mass in terms of industrial density, an accelerated process of layoffs and suspensions.”, concludes Schorr.
It is interesting the confession made by Indec in its explanatory statement, in which it points out the increase in intermediation services associated with the growth of loans and deposits, and banking commissions, among the factors that pushed growth in September. And they add “another of the sectors that grew in September were agents and brokerage companies due to the increase in the volume traded in public securities.”
That is, the banks They have been having more activity in their classic role of intermediaries, receiving deposits and granting loans. Credit destined for productive investment? With high interest rates, it doesn’t seem like it. Rather, at the same time, a huge family debt to compensate for the lack of income to carry out their daily consumption. And also, says Indec, the sector dedicated to speculation in the financial cycle, with public securities, was very active.
According to aggregate data from Banco Central, the economist of The Daily Left, Emiliano Trodleranalyzed that “although there was a strong year-on-year increase in credit to the private sector, mortgage and consumer loans peaked in April and have been losing momentum since then. Credit destined for commercial activities has been registering negative variations since July. Not everything is explained by the electoral noise.”
Likewise, he added that “now Instead of remunerated liabilities of the BCRA, banks have Treasury securities which are undoubtedly a vehicle for financial speculation, but the main source of income is coming from the intermediation sideso the banking system is becoming more procyclical and depends on economic activity, which seems to have lost dynamism “several months before the September electoral noise was recorded.”
This growth of the financial sector contrasts with the cry of the bankerswhich led by Grupo Financiero Galicia, began to present negative accounting balances for the third quarter and a alleged loss of profitability. How can it be possible? It’s bad that they regret it, They themselves, along with Milei and Caputo, did it.
Trodler explained: “it is clear that due to the volatility that existed in the months prior to the election, and especially in September, the margin of financial intermediation was greatly compressed due to two factors: firstly, due to the rise in lace to dry up the peso market, which made there less availability to lend; both interest rates rose to retain the pesos that do not go to the dollar. Furthermore, since the beginning of the year, records an increase in delinquencies and bad debt chargesespecially in the retail segment. It is the flipside of falling incomes and household debt that starts to make water.”
It is known that Financial “intermediation”, precisely, is not an economic driver or engine. On the contrary, its future is closely linked to what happens in the “real economy.” The Milei model anchored in the exchange rateeconomic opening, fiscal adjustment and income adjustment, is showing its results more fully in terms of destruction of the productive apparatus and loss of jobs.
We stated last week that it is necessary to think about how to defend a true productive sovereignty in the face of imperialist plunder and primarization. Along this path, the resistance of workers against layoffs and factory closures, the organization in defense of their jobs, and in defense of fundamental standards of scientific and technological development such as CONICET, INTI, INTA, CONEA, INVAP, public universities, Argentine nuclear power plantetc., play a central role.
If in good years the improvements in profitability do not translate into a qualitative leap in the living conditions of the social majority, in times of crisis the employers protect their capital and leave hundreds of families unemployed. Therefore, also A debate on the ways to develop the productive apparatus on a collective basis becomes necessary.outside the underlying logic of private property.
Very minimum wage
Another of the bastions of the Milei model is the permanent search for lower salaries even further to benefit the different sectors of capital. This is done by indirect way of promoting more competition between workers as jobs are destroyed, and by direct way to intervene to lower salaries in collective negotiations, lower “labor costs” through the discussion of labor reform, and also, in the setting the minimum wage.
According to a report from the Cifra-CTA Center, the minimum, vital and mobile wage is almost 60 points below the level of November 2015. The economist and professor at the UBA, Mariana Gonzalezauthor of the report along with Cecilia Garriga, told this newspaper that “there is a intention of the government to increasingly depress the purchasing power of the minimum, vital and mobile wage and to make it cease to exist as a salary policy, which puts a floor on salaries, which has the capacity to intervene on the lowest salaries, to be a reference even for workers who are not registered”.
This Wednesday the Salary Council met at the Ministry of Labor but it was already known in advance that it is only to comply. As in the last few times, there was no agreement and the minimum wage, which is now barely $322.000will be set by decree.
In this sense, Mariana Gonzalez indicated that the minimum wage “would also have the potential to be an equalizing policy, as occurred in other historical periods. On the contrary, the Government that had the definition in each of the meetings of the Salary Council, which ended in awards from the Secretary of Laborin each of the instances what he did was, on an extremely depressed value, determine adjustments below inflation”.
The various fronts on which The working class sees a growing stifling of its aspirationswill have a meeting point in the coming weeks around the fight against labor reform.
Faced with an increasingly overwhelming reality and the complicit inaction of union leaders such as the CGT, the endurance of workers does not only happen at the level of individual strategies (overexploitation, adjustment of expenses, family debt). The need for those collective organizing strategies from below to face layoffs, factory closures, salary discounts and the construction of bonds of solidarity, with the example of the hard struggle of the Garrahan Hospital and the resistance of retired for reference.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
