Economic Briefing about Argentina

On the morning of Monday January 5th, all of the students on this trip got dressed in their nicest business casual clothing and met in the lobby.  We were about to hear our first speaker, James Koloditch, a counselor for commercial affairs.  We went into a meeting room eager to hear about the culture and business of this unfamiliar country.

Mr. Koloditch works with the embassy here in Argentina.  He is from America and works for the Department of Commerce.  His job has taken him all over the world.  He stays in a country for 2-4 years working with their international trade administration.  An interesting fact about our speaker was that he did not major in international business or finance.  Instead he majored in Spanish but is still able to be successful at his job.

He discussed during his presentation the state that Argentina is in financially.  He seemed to be a little negative but he had an optimistic attitude about good changes coming to this country.  Currently Argentina is not a good place to do business in.  There are a lot of trade barriers, and market challenges.  The biggest market challenge is the inflation of the peso and the dollar. The "blue market" exchange rate for the peso is drastically higher than the actual exchange rate and that causes many issues.  The informal markets in Argentina count for 30% of all laborers so that is reason why it is difficult to see exactly how Argentina's economy is doing.  The current president in Argentina is Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.  There is an election in October of this year and many Argentinians are hoping for change.

 

In conclusion Mr. Koloditch explained that there are a lot of opportunities in Argentina.  Currently with all of their trade barriers they are still holding their own with other countries, so with change hopefully their economy will rise.  In this country there is a theme of an economic crisis every 10-12 years and our speaker believes that Argentina is currently in a crisis.  That means that their economy can only improve from here.

Our speaker helped to explain the opportunities that Americans have as jobs in this country as well as important information about Argentina as a whole.  I personally thought that presentation was very interesting and informative.