Argentina rations beef

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32568, 30 March 1971, Page 17

Argentina rations beef

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) BUENOS AIRES, March 29. Argentina has again rationed beef for the population’s dinner tables in an effort to save her vital beef export trade from ruin.

A ban on the domestic sale of beef on alternate weeks during the next three months became effective at midnight, the “New York Times” News Service reports. With mutton, pork, poultry and fish priced beyond ordinary family budgets, most people will be eating pasta in various forms during the ban. The move was one of the first taken, by LieutenantGeneral Alejandro Agustin Lanusse after he had ousted Brigadier-General Roberto Marcelo Levingston as President and placed himself

in that post. It is aimed at rescuing the vital beef export trade said to have been ruined by recent unsound economic policies. The new President, who is a member of one of Argentina’s leading land-owning and business families, has also ordered special credits to bankrupt meat-packing companies specialising in exports, to permit them to reopen.

The sharp drop in beef exports has eliminated potentially a quarter of Argentina’s foreign exchange earnings, and most bankers expect the rapidly-weakening peso to be devalued from the present four to the United States dollar to between four and a half and five pesos. In recent months, three important export - packing houses have closed because they could not buy cattle at economic prices.

Whether they can re-open depends on the supply of cattle. Ranchers’ associa-

tions are still angry about being forced to sell off large numbers of animals early last year because the Government wanted to swamp the market and keep inflation in check. Beef is the largest component in Argentina’s cost-of-living index, upon which wage increases are based. The Government forced the sales of cattle by imposing heavy taxes on both land and beasts. This policy led to a shortage of animals aggravated by drought at the time, and prices nearly doubled by the end of the year.

The Government is hoping that the approaching winter will force the ranchers to unload their stock rather than face the prospect of buying feed. But with a black market in beef already blossoming, the meat trade expects the ranchers to hold back their badly-depleted herds until prices match their expectations.