Production Minister Juan Manuel Pichetto, along with Secretary of Fruit, Oscar Rolo and officials from four national ministries, continued with the analysis of the alignments that these agencies can offer to links that make up the production chain.
The agenda developed in the framework of the second meeting of the Fruit Observatory of Apples and Pears, involved issues such as union stewardship, production costs, transparency law, traceability, documentation, internal market incentive, coordination of national, provincial and health policies. The authorities presented the Ministry of Production the new regulatory framework that currently drives the Government of Rio Negro, and is working in the Planning Commission,
Economic Affairs and Tourism of the Legislature.
In this regard, the Secretary of Fruit presented the Commercial and Physical Traceability Program, that consists of a new regulatory framework to replace the existing legislation on transparency and contractualization (law No. 3.611 and 3.993) which are still in force. He explained that two additional laws will be applied, a commercial traceability law and another law for binding contracts for the marketing of fruit. On the essential differences between the old and new
legislation, the official said that, "what we have today is a voluntary law that awards with tax incentives the creation contracts for the first sale of the fruit." He stated that "this was accompanied by an information system that is not systematic on production costs, which in practice worked as a reference for contracts."
The new legislation, however, will have a mandatory contract law through a system of business licenses for buyers. These agreements will have voluntary prices, but an incentive to include reference prices by species, variety, quality, size and target market. The reference price information will not emerge from production costs,
but thanks to new technologies we will be taking the price from real time information on market prices through a comprehensive commercial traceability system," said Rolo.
In this regard, the Department of Fruit is currently working on building this system along with the provincial company Altec and the Ministry of Economy of the Nation. The Fruit Secretary explained that, "with these two legal instruments international and local market realities will be more transparent, offering correct prices so as to be taken into sale contracts with commercial traceability." He explained that "at the same time, the weakest part of the business relationship and the independent producer, through binding contracts with the correct price deadlines and ways of payment will be protected by the marketing laws."
The overall objective is "to restore the profitability of the farmer, for the farmer to no longer depend on the constant economic assistance of the province or nation and that the fruit to be self-financed," said the official. Finally, Rolo noted "We are aware that this does not yet solve our current problems of competitiveness, but it is a dimension that depends on the macroeconomic and tariff structure defined by the national government."
Source: La Mañana de Cipolletti