Agriculture
Argentina is one of the world’s major agricultural producers, ranking among the top producers and, in most of the following, exporters of beef, citrus fruit, grapes, honey, maize, sorghum, soybeans, squash, sunflower seeds, wheat, and yerba mate. Agriculture accounted for 9% of GDP in 2010, and around one fifth of all exports (not including processed food and feed, which are another third).
Commercial harvests reached 103 million tons in 2010, of which over 54 million were oilseeds (mainly soy and sunflower), and over 46 million were cereals (mainly maize, wheat, and sorghum). Soy and its byproducts, mainly animal feed and vegetable oils, are major export commodities with one fourth of the total; cereals added another 7%.
Cattle-raising is also a major industry, though mostly for domestic consumption; beef, leather and dairy were 5% of total exports. Sheep-raising and wool are important in Patagonia, though these activities have declined by half since 1990.
Fruits and vegetables made up 4% of exports: apples and pears in the Río Negro valley; rice, oranges and other citrus in the northwest and Mesopotamia; grapes and strawberries in Cuyo (the west), and berries in the far south.
Cotton and tobacco are major crops in the Gran Chaco, sugarcane and chile peppers in the northwest, and olives and garlic in the west. Yerba mate tea (Misiones), tomatoes (Salta) and peaches (Mendoza) are grown for domestic consumption.
Argentina is the world’s fifth-largest wine producer, and fine wine production has taken major leaps in quality. A growing export, total viticulture potential is far from having been met. Mendoza is the largest wine region, followed by San Juan.
Government policy towards the lucrative agrarian sector is a subject of, at times, contentious debate in Argentina. A grain embargo by farmers protesting an increase in export taxes for their products began in March 2008 and, following a series of failed negotiations, strikes and lockouts largely subsided only with the July 16 defeat of the export tax-hike in the Senate.
Argentine fisheries bring in about a million tons of catch annually and are centered around Argentine hake which makes up 50% of the catch, pollack, squid and centolla crab.
Forestry has long history in every Argentine region, apart from the pampas, accounting for almost 14 million m³ of roundwood harvests. Eucalyptus, pine, and elm (for cellulose) are all widely harvested, mainly for domestic furniture, as well as paper products (1.5 million tons).
Fisheries and logging each account for 2% of exports.
Industry
Manufacturing is the largest single sector in the nation’s economy (19% of GDP), and is well-integrated into Argentine agriculture, with half the nation’s industrial exports being agricultural in nature.
Leading sectors by production value are: food processing, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, farming equipment and auto parts, iron, steel and aluminum, petroleum, as well as industrial machinery and home appliances. These latter include over three million big ticket items, as well as an array of electronics, kitchen appliances and cellular phones, among others.
Beverages are another significant sector, and Argentina has long been among the top five wine producing countries in the world, though in 2000, beer overtook wine production, and today leads by nearly two billion liters a year to one.
Other manufactured goods include textiles and leather, plastics and tires, forestry products, publishing, cement, glass and tobacco products. Nearly half the industries are based in and around Buenos Aires, although Córdoba, Rosario, and Ushuaia are also significant industrial centers. The latter city became the nation’s leading center of electronics production during the 1980s, and will supply the majority of the nation’s laptop market by 2013.
Construction permits nationwide covered nearly 20 million m² (215 million ft²) in 2007. The construction sector accounts for over 5% of GDP, and two-thirds of the construction was for residential buildings.
Argentine electric output totaled over 117 billion Kwh in 2010. This was generated in large part through well developed natural gas and hydroelectric resources.
Nuclear energy is also of high importance, and the country is one of the largest producers and exporters, alongside Canada and Russia of cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope widely used in cancer therapy.
Services
The service sector is the biggest contributor to total GDP, accounting for over 60%. Argentina enjoys a diversified service sector, which includes well-developed social, corporate, financial, insurance, real estate, transport, communication services, and tourism.
The telecommunications sector has been growing at a fast pace, and the economy benefits from widespread access to mobile telephony (more than 75% of the population having access to mobile phones), Internet (more than 16 million people online), and broadband services. Regular telephone services with 9.5 million lines and mail services are robust.
Banking
Argentine banking, whose deposits exceeded US$90 billion in November 2010, developed around public sector banks, but is now dominated by the private sector.
The private sector banks account for most of the 85 active institutions (4,000 branches) and holds nearly 60% of deposits and loans, and there are as many foreign-owned banks as local ones. The largest bank in Argentina by far, however, has long been the public Banco de la Nación Argentina. Not to be confused with the Central Bank, this institution now accounts for about a fourth of the total deposits and a seventh of its loan portfolio.
During the 1990s, Argentina’s financial system was consolidated and strengthened. Deposits grew from less than US$15 billion in 1991 to over US$80 billion in 2000, while outstanding credit (70% of it to the private sector) tripled to nearly US$100 billion.
The banks largely lent US dollars and took deposits in Argentine pesos, and when the peso lost most of its value in early 2002, many borrowers again found themselves hard pressed to keep up. Delinquencies tripled to about 37%.
Over a fifth of deposits had been withdrawn by December 2001, when Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo imposed a near freeze on cash withdrawals. The lifting of the restriction a year later was bittersweet, being greeted calmly, if with some umbrage, at not having these funds freed at their full U.S. dollar value. Some fared worse, as owners of the now-defunct Velox Bank defrauded their clients of up to US$800 million.
Credit in Argentina is still relatively tight. Lending to the private sector has been increasing 40% a year since 2004, and delinquencies are down to 3%. Still, credit outstanding is, in real terms, about a fifth less than in 2000, and as a percent of GDP (around 15%), quite low by international standards.
The prime rate, which had hovered around 10% in the 1990s, hit 67% in 2002. Although it returned to normal levels quickly, inflation, and more recently, global instability have been affecting it again. The prime rate was over 20% for much of 2009, and 17% in the first half of 2010.
Partly a function of this and past instability, Argentines have historically held more deposits overseas than domestically. The estimated US$140 billion in overseas accounts and investment exceeded the domestic monetary base (M3) by nearly 50% in 2009.
Tourism
The World Economic Forum estimated that, in 2008, tourism generated around US$25 billion in economic turnover, and employed 1.8 million. Tourism from abroad contributed US$ 4.3 billion, having become the third largest source of foreign exchange in 2004. Around 4.6 million foreign visitors arrived in 2007, yielding a positive balance vis-à-vis the number of Argentines traveling abroad.
Argentines, who have long been active travelers within their own country, accounted for over 80%, and international tourism has also seen healthy growth (nearly doubling since 2001). Stagnant for over two decades, domestic travel increased strongly in the last few years, and visitors are flocking to a country seen as affordable, exceptionally diverse, and safe.
INDEC recorded 2.3 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2007 (a 12% increase), at the Ministro Pistarini International Airport, alone (around half the total); of these, 26 % arrived from Brazil, 25 % from Europe, 14 % from the United States and Canada, 8 % from Chile, 19 % from the rest of the Western Hemisphere and 8 % from the rest of the World.
Natural Resources
Mining is a growing industry, increasing from 2% of GDP in 1980 to nearly 4% today. Argentina is an important regional producer of minerals, including primary aluminum, lead, copper, zinc, silver and gold. The northwest and San Juan Province are the main regions of activity.
Coal is mined in Santa Cruz Province. Metals mined include copper, zinc, magnesium, sulfur, tungsten, uranium silver, and particularly, gold, whose production was boosted by recent investments from Barrick Gold in San Juan.
Metal ore exports soared from US$ 200 million in 1996 to US$ 1.2 billion in 2004, and to over US$ 3 billion in 2010.
Minerals
Aluminum
Argentina was the third-largest Latin American producer of aluminum in 2003, producing 271,932 metric tons; one of six Latin American producers of mine lead and zinc, ranking second to Mexico in lead; and the fourth-largest producer of silver in Latin America.
Copper
Mine copper production in 2003 totaled 199,020 metric tons, up slightly from 2001’s output of 191,566 metric tons, but down from 2002’s level of 204,027 metric tons. Almost all copper production was from Minera Alumbrera, operating from the Bajo de la Alumbrera open pit mine, in Catamarca Province, since 1998.
Gold
Gold production in 2003, mostly from the Bajo de la Alumbrera and the Cerro Vanguardia mines, totaled 29,744 kg, down from 32,506 kg in 2002.
Silver and lead
The country’s total silver mine output for 2003 was 133,917 kg, down from 152,802 kg, in 2001. In 2003, zinc mine production totaled 29,839 metric tons, down from 2001’s total of 39,703 metric tons. In that same year lead mine output totaled 12,079 metric tons down slightly from 12,334 metric tons in 2001.
Boron
In 2003, Argentina produced 545,304 metric tons of crude boron materials, ranking third in the world, after the United States and Turkey; the 1999 and 2000 totals were 245,450 and 512,624 metric tons, respectively.
Other minerals
Among other industrial minerals, output in 2003 for limestone was 8,119,879 metric tons; dolomite, 320,116 metric tons; crushed quartzite, 284,503 metric tons; crushed quartz, 100,000 metric tons; talc, 1,759 metric tons; bentonite, 128,406 metric tons; diatomite, 24,946 metric tons; feldspar, 88,427 metric tons; crude gypsum, 387,936 metric tons; kaolin, 10,653 metric tons; and salt, 1,156,023 metric tons.
The country also produced marble, clays, celestite, sodium carbonate, asbestos, barite, and vermiculite. Asphaltite, fluorspar, mica, manganese, and antimony are found mainly in the northwest. There are also deposits of lithium, beryllium, and columbium.
Petroleum
Around 35 million m³ each of petroleum and petroleum fuels are produced, as well as 50 billion m³ of natural gas, making the nation self-sufficient in these staples, and generating around 10% of exports.
The most important oil fields lie in Patagonia and Cuyo. A network of pipelines (next to Mexico’s, the second-longest in Latin America) send raw product to Bahía Blanca, center of the petrochemical industry, and to the La Plata-Buenos Aires-Rosario industrial belt.