Argentine Trade Promotion Institute (IAPI)

The Argentine Trade Promotion Institute was a government agency created to control the export of important products (chiefly grains and meat) and to purchase key goods abroad. The IAPI was established in March 1946 by the outgoing Edelmiro Farrell government at the suggestion of the advisers of Juan Perón. It was severely modified, stripped of much of its power, in the wake of Perón's fall from power in 1955 and abolished in April 1958.

A crucial economic tool of the Perón regime, IAPI countered efforts by the Allies to purchase food for Europe jointly and also eliminated the unpopular large grain-exporting firms. As a monopoly, IAPI could drive a hard bargain with purchasers of Argentine goods, as well as with producers. IAPI purchased at low prices from producers and sold at high prices. Profits were used to subsidize industrialization. After 1950 the need for more exports led IAPI to encourage greater production.

IAPI remains controversial. Most commentators believe it crippled the agriculture sector by paying low prices, thereby discouraging production and helping to create a balance-of-payments crisis. Charges of corruption were also made. The agency's defenders believe that producers' profits did not suffer as claimed and that IAPI produced higher prices for exports than the falling terms of trade would have permitted under other circumstances.

See alsoPerón, Juan Domingo .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz (h.), La agricultura y la ganadería argentina en el período 1930–1960 (1967).

Jorge Fodor, "Perón's Policies for Agricultural Exports 1946–1948: Dogmatism or Commonsense?" in Argentina in the Twentieth Century, edited by David Rock (1975).

Susana Novick, IAPI: Auge y decadencia (1986).

Paul H. Lewis, The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism (1990).

Additional Bibliography

Bouzas, Roberto, and Emiliano Pagnotta. Dilemas de la política comercial externa Argentina. Buenos Aires: Fundación OSDE: Universidad de San Andrés, 2003.

Novick, Susana. IAPI: auge y decadencia. Buenos Aires: Catalogos, 2004.

Viguera, Aníbal. La trama política de la apertura económica en la Argentina (1987–1996). La Plata: Ediciones al Margen: Editorial de la U.N.L.P., 2000.

                                        Joel Horowitz