Buenos Aires: International exporters and investors will closely watch a run-off election in Argentina on Sunday that could lead to an easing of trade and import restrictions in Latin America's third-biggest economy.
Opinion polls show Mauricio Macri, a former football executive, could win and become Argentina's most economically liberal leader since the 1990s.
That has raised hopes among financiers, but fears among domestic businesses and poorer Argentines who have benefited from the social and trade policies of the outgoing president, Cristina Kirchner.
If Macri breaks the 12-year grip of Kirchner and her late husband Nestor's left-wing movement by beating their ally Daniel Scioli, he could liberalize the economy and lift the limits currently imposed on buying of US dollars.
"Argentines need to get back to thinking in pesos," he said last week. "For that we have to reestablish confidence."
Scioli has warned Argentina faces a sharp depreciation of its peso currency if Macri abruptly lifts the controls, as he has proposed, on December 11, the day after the new president takes office.
That could slash Argentines' spending power.
But experts say that whoever wins will sooner or later have to bring the official exchange rate -- just under 10 pesos to the dollar -- into line with the market rate, currently close to 15 pesos.
"Foreign investors are backing Macri. But either candidate would take a similar path" by easing the dollar limits, said the director of the Buenos Aires stock exchange, Juan Napoli.
"Macri would do it quickly, Scioli would do it gradually."
Macri has attracted voters who say they are tired of Kirchner's state controls and her combative style.
But some businesses fear the pro-market Macri would lift import restrictions that protect their products and jobs -- which Scioli has vowed to defend.
"We don't want to return to the industrial genocide of the 1990s with free imports," said Marco Meloni, owner of two textile factories.
"Products would be approved that come from slave labor in Asia."
AFP
