The government eliminated the system previously used to authorize imports, known as SIRA, and replaced it with a new scheme. The new system, called the Statistic Import System (SEDI, by its Spanish acronym), aims to simplify companies’ import processes, according to different government officials.

Economy Minister Luis Caputo said in a post on X that the SEDI aims to take the import process “back to normal”. “The state bureaucracy will no longer have the power to decide who imports a good and who does not,” he added. The new system was made official through a resolution signed by Argentina’s revenue system (AFIP) and the Economy Ministry’s Trade Secretariat. 

“We always believed that the decision of a private [company] has more value than a determination made by someone behind a desk,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on Tuesday in his daily press conference.

The SIRA was enforced in October 2022 during Sergio Massa’s tenure in the Economy Ministry. It aimed to give the government greater control over import proceedings and reduce the Central Bank’s use of U.S. dollars. In 2022, then-Vice President Cristina Kirchner criticized the government for authorizing what she called an “import festival” fed by the gap between the official and the parallel exchange rates. 

Massa was of the same idea and used to give examples of companies engaging in that alleged practice — a textile company importing all the fabric it needed for “129 years,” or companies that imported luxury goods in the middle of a reserve scarcity crisis. The previous administration left office with net reserves at a historically low level, negative US$ 11 billion.

The SEDI does not eliminate the need to pay import tariffs nor does it grant automatic access to U.S. dollars due to the reserve scarcity crisis — two weeks ago, the Central Bank established a gradual system to access reserves according to the type of imported goods or services. For electric energy, hydrocarbons, and derivatives, access will be immediate; pharmaceutical products and fertilizers will have a 30-day waiting period, while automobile manufacturers will have to wait 180 days. 

According to a communiqué by the Economy Ministry, the new system will eliminate discretionary barriers to trade, disarm possible niches of corruption, and bring the system into line with the World Trade Organization’s international standards.

Importing companies usually complained about the complexity of the old system. The Argentine Confederation of Medium-Sized Companies (CAME) supported the SEDI’s launch in a communiqué.

“This deactivates the Kafkaesque tangle [we had to handle],” José Lopetegui, CAME’s head of international trade, told the Herald. “The elimination of SIRA takes away the anguish all that paperwork [used to cause us] — you never knew if they [the government] would approve it,” he added. Lopetegui said that companies had to invest lots of human resources just to get a SIRA approved, which implied getting authorizations from the Central Bank, Customs, and AFIP. 

According to him, the new SEDI system will only determine whether the company that petitions for an import permit has the economic capacity to make a claim, which he considers “logical.”

Lopetegui agreed with the assertion made by the Economy Ministry’s press release which stated that 75% of Argentina’s imports are used for producing goods and services. The ministry said that, between January and November 2023, the imports of other goods accounted for 38% of the total, while machinery and parts for production parts accounted for 37%. The communiqué argued that, when imports grow, so does GDP.

“Importers were painted [by the previous administration] as perverse people who take our dollars abroad — the truth is the opposite,” Lopetegui said. “Between 80 and 90% of the products sold in Argentina have at least one imported component — and we have to import them.”