
Argentina’s government is wooing entrepreneurs with a new law - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/21/argentinas-government-is-wooing-entrepreneurs-with-a-new-law
======
edko
This sounds great. I think, however, that the big challenge for Argentina is
convincing investors that this has any chance of being stable for many years
to come. In a country where every new government promises and attempts a
radical re-foundation of the State, with no long-term policies and goals
agreed to and respected by the whole political spectrum, this may be hard to
do.

~~~
owebmaster
I've been in Buenos Aires for 3 months in the beginning of the year and I can
assure you that if this government stays all startups will shutdown due to
impossibility to pay electric and other bills.

~~~
rolodato
I'm from Buenos Aires and I can assure you that this is outright false. Buenos
Aires is the largest population center of Argentina and has had heavily
subsidized (e.g. electricity bills of 2 USD are not uncommon) utilities for
almost a decade . In the rest of the country these subsidies rarely exist, so
everyone else pays a realistic price.

~~~
owebmaster
Yeah, bills went from 2 USD to 30 USD. And the dollar from 8 pesos to 16. If
cheap electricity doesn't help technology companies, I don't know what helps.
Sure isn't "entrepreneur's laws", because most of projects fail way before
really need it, like when the founders (or wannabe) can't pay their bills (and
quit their jobs, if they are lucky to have one).

~~~
molmalo
It was only 8 pesos for very small amounts authorized by the government, the
street price was already 14/15.

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justboxing
How come no-one is talking about safety w.r.t. moving to and living in
Argentina?

> In the first three months of 2017, there were 77 kidnappings for ransom.

Source: [May 2017] - The Numbers And Locations Of Kidnappings For Ransom In
Argentina => [http://www.thebubble.com/the-numbers-and-locations-of-
kidnap...](http://www.thebubble.com/the-numbers-and-locations-of-kidnappings-
for-ransom-in-argentina/)

> From March 20 to March 31, authorities registered at least 16 express
> kidnappings in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area. According to Clarin, the
> victims of these kidnappings are of all ages and social classes.

Source: [Apr 2017] - Express Kidnappings on the Rise Again in Buenos Aires =>
[http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/express-
kidnappings-...](http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/express-kidnappings-
on-the-rise-again-in-buenos-aires)

Can someone who lives there throw some light on the prevalence of ransom
kidnappings? I read about this a while back, and want to know if it's really a
cause for concern for Americans and other foreigners moving to Argentina for
work, or is it mostly localized (i.e. political kidnappings / gang related
kidnappings) in which case you can be somewhat "reassured" that it may not
happen to you.

~~~
filvdg
As a European I lived in Argentina for a year. At one point I took an official
looking city cab at the airport and quickly realised that the driver had other
intentions than getting me to my apartment. He dropped me off in another part
of town after emptying all my pockets, keeping my luggage as ransom. It does
not need to be a complex kidnapping for you to feel unsafe.

~~~
conanbatt
I'm really surprised by this, there is an official cab office right outside
ezeiza, which gives it some legitimacy. How did you pick a cab? (i want to
know which ones are actually unsafe)

~~~
dep_b
Use Uber, call a radio taxi, use an app that is used by a local radio taxi or
when you are actually at Ezeiza just go to one of the many stands that are
right after the scanners before you go out into the main hall.

I am really careful at the points where you will find a lot of tourists like
Ezeiza and the central bus station. We've got screwed by a "tapper" once, paid
much more for the ride than was actually supposed because he rigged the meter.
This happened just outside the bus station where they're waiting for victims
from out of town that don't know the tariffs, distances etcetera.

Hailing on the street never went wrong.

~~~
conanbatt
I'm argentinian, I've never had issues coming from the airport, thats why i'm
asking. Uber works from the airport? thats pretty sweet..

~~~
dep_b
I actually never used Uber! I assumed they were working in the greater Buenos
Aires area not just the center. I'd personally take a remise over Uber any
day.

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ggambetta
I'd be skeptical. Hopefully the new government will make things different, but
with precedents such as [1] and [2], I'd give them a good couple of decades to
prove they're going to remain stable.

If you're looking for stability + healthy startup environment + South America,
look into Chile.

Source: Am from Uruguay

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-03-13/now-
argen...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-03-13/now-argentina-
can-t-even-pay-bonds-in-argentina)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito)

~~~
luislezcair
On Monday they issued 100-year bonds that yield nearly 8% of interest. Huge
public debt, desindustrialization of the economy and capitals flowing out of
the country are some of the causes that led to the Corralito. This is history
repeating itself.

Bus this new law is certainly good news.

~~~
marcosdumay
They sold a bound at 0.05% of face value? That's an incredibly new kind of
low. Why would they ever push for that long term?

~~~
tetraca
It's a rock and a hard place. They have a deficit, they cannot wring out any
more money via taxes, and cutting social spending would likely result in both
outrage from the electorate and economic pains due to the policies of the
previous administration. So to keep the machine running they're borrowing
money, with the hope that pro-business policies will attract the investment
needed to be able to make everything ultimately sustainable.

At least, this is how it was explained to me.

~~~
marcosdumay
It's funny that here at Brazil, every time the government uses this policy we
get 1.5-2 years of intense growth, and then a big recession.

The recession always lasts until ~1 year after the government start cutting
social spending and stop the pro-growth policies. Then we get moderate growth
again, as long as the non-pro-growth is maintained.

Besides, business don't tend to like most policies called "pro-business".

Still what I don't get is why they are selling 100 years bounds at all. The
interest rate is quite understandable.

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l5870uoo9y
On another node, Larry Summers told an interesting anecdote regarding
Argentina recently:

> In 1900, Argentina was closer to the United States economically than most of
> Europe is today. Today, we think of Argentina as a poor developing country.
> Argentine growth only has lagged American growth by 7/10 of a 1 percent over
> all of that period. So when you get things wrong, when you have
> dysfunctional governance, it doesn't undo you in a year or five years or
> even a decade. It does over time.

Argentina's "deal-based" system where initiative comes from the charismatic
leader have been outperformed by the ruled-based system prominent in US or
Germany.

~~~
conanbatt
Argentina's economic history is ridden with political catastrophes.

Even the period of liberalism in the 1880-1920's had plenty of issues:
indentured servants, borderline slavery. Workers protests were met with
violence and murder by officials.

Argentina has had a military coup every couple of decades in the previous
century, which included entire presidencies with unelected officials,
culminating in a coup that killed between 9000 and 30000 thousand people.

The lack of political stability can explain the problems in all other areas,
like ineffective justice or economic stability.

Not to mention that using a 100 year span, and including germany as an example
to follow..

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gozur88
The problem with doing business in Argentina is you could have written the
title "Argentina's government is wooing entrepreneurs with a new law... this
week". Next week? Who knows.

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dep_b
One of the reasons tech is doing really well here in the last ten years
despite the governments is that you don't need a lot of imports to work on IT
except for the computers, the customers abroad are easily reached through
internet and also you don't pay export taxes like you would if you would
export meat or soy. People are really well educated as education up to a
bachelor's degree is completely free.

What used to be difficult is getting money into the country, something that
sounds as crazy as it really is and all of the different white grey and black
exchange rates. I had to send money to a US account owned by somebody that
would promise to pay me in pesos here because there just was no other way to
do it. That really made me nervous.

Also I couldn't pay my bills abroad because I couldn't send any money if
nothing was left on my foreign accounts.

~~~
aaron_m04
You say "used to be". How long ago was that?

~~~
conanbatt
Less than two years ago. There were currency controls that pushed most
operations outside the country or through the illegal ring.

------
good_vibes
Has anyone here lived/worked in Buenos Aires? I've been considering it as a
place to check out for an extended period of time in 2018.

~~~
lalanv
I've lived in Buenos Aires all my life. This is my biased pros/cons list: \-
It's a beautiful city with a lot of art and beautiful places. \- Food is great
\- Most of the people is nice and open minded (same sex marriage is accepted
here) \- We have a lot of good IT professionals and great entrepreneurial
ecosystem (including cryptocurrencies) \- Argentina is a beautiful country to
do some tourism \- Our timezone is great, we are close to NYC time for example

Cons: \- Prices. I've been travelling a lot this past years and I found Buenos
Aires might be as expensive as other big cities. \- Inflation, it's really
hard to deal everyday with it. I've lost sense of prices to be honest \- Some
places are _really_ insecure. Also, you might have problems on safe areas too.
I live in a good neighborhood and someone broke into my apartment when I was
out.

~~~
dariusm5
I looked into moving to Argentina recently but found some complaints on forums
about the speed and reliability of the Internet. What are your experiences
with the Internet in Argentina?

~~~
lalanv
Well. Sadly I don't have any benchmark (or some serious analysis) to share
with you but I can tell you this:

\- I pay about 40usd for a non symmetric 12Mbps connection. It works ok - at
least for me - I can stream music or watch something on Netflix without any
problems.

\- My ISP has a max of 50Mbps (non symmetric)

\- You can find some corporate symmetric connections (I'm not aware if you can
have those at home) but I suspect they are like a regular connection in some
other more advanced countries

~~~
dep_b
In some zones you have symmetric fiberoptic lines. To your house too if you
want to pay that premium (I do).

~~~
lalanv
Besides Iplan, is there another alternative? Can you share how much does it
cost to you?

~~~
dep_b
iPlan perhaps doesn't even use it's own fiber, apparently there are more
companies offering it. But it's legal to call your company FiberTel in
Argentina and then sell cable not fiber, so the situation is pretty opaque to
me.

The full price is 1200 pesos, around 75 bucks. So not cheap. But to have
something that works reliably up and down it's peanuts, the cheaper options
are not as reliable and have asymmetric speeds. Stable videoconferencing is a
must.

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forinti
Latin America needs more integration. None of its markets is very big (except
Brazil or Mexico), but together they are huge. It needs to be easier for small
businesses to interact and swap money and goods. There are some sectors
(automotive comes to mind) where governments set up deals, but for most
businesses it's really hard. Not even the mail works well enough.

