Argentina: The Central Bank extended the validity of the subsidized credit lines

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The Central Bank (BCRA) decided this Thursday to extend until June 30 the validity of the financing lines for productive investment of micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MiPymes). In this way, companies will be able to continue requesting loans with a subsidized interest rate of 30% for the acquisition of capital goods and 35% for the case of financing working capital.

It should be remembered that current regulations establish that banks must maintain an amount available for these lines equivalent to 7.5% of their non-financial private sector deposits in pesos. On the other hand, the BCRA also extended until June 30 the validity of Communication A 7030 and its updates but introduced modifications to simplify compliance.

In this sense, the monetary authority will allow the possibility of applying the pre-financing of exports with foreign credits for the importation of capital goods to inputs required in the production of exportable goods and up to 50% for the purchase of goods for domestic consumption. Compliance will also be simplified for importers who enter through the Private Request or Courier channels.

Communication 7030 establishes that companies with funds declared abroad must have first of all those resources for the payment of commercial obligations abroad before being able to buy foreign currency in the local market. It restricts access to companies that have carried out dollar purchase and sale operations through the stock market (with settlement and MEP dollar) in the last 90 days.

Last December, the Central Bank had made the regulations more flexible by allowing those companies that need to import goods to increase their productive export capacity, to use all the proceeds from advances and pre-financing from abroad with a minimum term of 180 calendar days, for advance payments of capital goods.