After a one-month suspension, Argentina is close to clinching a deal with slaughterhouses to partially restart beef exports. In May, the Argentine government suspended shipments in order to slow down the inflation of domestic food prices and, since that happened, meatpackers and entities linked to the sector have been negotiating a way to remove the restrictions.
Argentina’s Production Minister Matias Kulfas said in an interview to local radio that he had several dialogue meetings with meat industry leaders and that exports will soon resume.
“The idea is to allow meat to be exported again, but we are going to do it within a system that allows us to guarantee a greater meat presence in the domestic market”, said Kulfas.
In the one-year period, until April 2021, meat prices in Argentina soared 60%-70%, according to official data. In the first four months of 2021, 28.8% of the 965,286 tons of beef produced in Argentina were exported, of which 76.6% went to China.