Argentina Public Finance

Argentina Public Finance

From 1910 to 1926 in the Argentine Republic, as in other civilized countries, a continuous increase in public expenditure is observed, nor could it have otherwise occurred in a new nation, with an not fully developed economy, in which the state has many functions to perform in order to the economic, intellectual and moral progress of its residents.

Thus the budget of the federal state, which in the year of the centenary of national independence authorized tax expenses of $ m / n 266.964.780 reaches the sum of $ m / n 687.246.78 in 1924. This increase is it produced in an accentuated way in the period 1910-1914, an era of prosperity and progress for the republic; from 1915 to 1919, the estimated expenses decrease, due to the economic imbalances produced by the European war, to grow again in the period 1920-1924:

Almost half of the political expenditure includes defense expenditure (war and navy). Of the increase costs, public works and public education absorb the most: from 1910 to 1924 they reached a total of $ m / n 2,579,550,530 and represent 37.70% of the total national public expenditure budgeted for the same years. Expenditure on public education, corresponding to the same period, reached a total of $ m / n 2,579,054,421; free and compulsory primary education contributes primarily to the increase in these expenses. The financial expenses, which concern the collection, supervision and investment of the rents, and the services of the public debt, have had, in the years studied, the same increase as the political and incremental expenses.

We will recall that the figures quoted above are nominal, and do not reflect the actual increase in national estimates, since fluctuations in the purchasing power of the currency are not considered. They also do not include the expenses of the autonomous institutions of the nation (National Council of Education, State Railways: Health Works, Banco della Nation, Mortgage Bank, National Postal Savings Bank, National Commission of Cheap Homes, etc., except for the part of these charged to the nation), which in 1922 reached about $ m / n 100,000,000.

According to ehuacom.com, the federal state’s revenue from its territorial state property and other assets includes the following items, and totaled $ m / n 1,741,000 in 1910 and $ m / n 2,391,000 in 1924.

The national revenues corresponding to the commercial and industrial property of the state add up to $ n / n 49,947,000 in 1910 and $ m / n 83,010,000 in 1924 and include the following items and sums:

National revenue from functions and services, affecting the state as such, and which reaches a sum of $ 2,703,000 in 1910 and $ 7,329,000 in 1924, is:

The importance of Argentina’s national land taxes; on agricultural and livestock production; on trade, industry and professions; on consumption; on civil, commercial and judicial acts, and on succession – can be seen from the following table.

The land tax, which is applied in the city of Buenos Aires and in the national territories, is called territorial contribution, and its proceeds are divided between the national treasury, the national education council and the municipalities of the federal capital and national territories. The export duties on agricultural livestock production and thus the taxes on trade, industry and professions in the federal capital and in the national territories with licenses, are distributed in the same way as the territorial contributions. Consumption is burdened by import duties (additional import duty 2 and 7%, surcharge of 25% and statistics fees, which constitute a real tax, since their amount is much greater than the cost of the service) and taxes internal on tobacco, alcohol, alcoholic drinks, perfumes, specific, medicines, jewels, playing cards, artificial drinks and matches. Internal taxes are distributed between the national treasury and the subsidy fund. The following tables illustrate the classification of the articles according to the foreign trade statistics; the performance of each group and the proportion of each to the total; the revenue, the proportion of the total and the increase in internal taxes, corresponding to the years 1910 and 1924.

Taxes on civil, commercial and judicial documents include those on stamped paper for administrative and judicial procedures, travel tickets and insurance. The national tax applicable to inheritances in the federal capital and in the national territories is entirely devolved to the National Education Council.

The Argentine Republic had and needs for its normal development two great factors of progress, labor and capital: workers to populate, under the protection of its fundamental charter, its territory of nearly three million square kilometers; capital for the increase of its incipient industries, and for the construction of ports, canals, railways, roads, sanitary works, etc. Hence the importance of loans, especially those contracted abroad, for the Argentine economy and finances.

From 1910 to 1924, the expenses of the internal and external public debt reached the sum of $ m / n 1,532,979,117.

Out of a total financial expenditure of $ 1,731,204,318, corresponding to the years 1910-1924, the national public debt figures for $ 1,532,979,117, that is about 88%; and absorbs 22.41% of the total amount of budgeted expenses in the same period, which reaches $ 6,834,541,039.

The consolidated national debt and the free float rose overall in 1910 to $ 1,113,845,000, or $ 191 per resident, and in 1922 to $ 2,187,710,000, or $ 243 per resident.

In recent years the floating debt and the consolidated debt then reached, separately, the following figures:

The sizeable increase in subsidized debt has its origin in large part in the budget deficits that have arisen over the past three decades. In fact, the sums collected and those spent during the years from 1910 to 1925 produced the previous balances which increased the floating debt to the current figure; its consolidation and its reduction to a minimum is of interest to the national government.

The Argentine monetary system is based on two fundamental laws: the monetary law of November 5, 1881 and that, called the conversion law, of November 4, 1899. The first, which created the weight (of 1.6129 gr. Of gold of 0, 900 fine, the gold one, and 25 grams of Agrigento also with a fineness of 0,900 fine, the silver one), declared the minting of gold to be unlimited and fixed, for each resident, a maximum of four pesos for silver coins and twenty-five for copper coins, it had a short duration, since paper money, first introduced in small quantities and as a premium on gold, gradually eliminated metal coins from circulation, and in 1886 the compulsory tender was declared. This was followed by one of the most serious crises that Argentina has gone through, called the crisis of progress, during which gold was quoted up to 400% above paper money; and only when trust returned to reign in the nation, the law of conversion, the work of the eminent statesman Dr. Carlo Pellegrini, intervened to stabilize the paper weight at a value of 44 gold centavos, which was equivalent to a type of conversion of 227.2727% for the weight gold. The silver divisional coin was replaced with small denomination tickets, later replaced by nickel coins of equal value.

The gold weight is indicated with the initials $ o / s (gold sold “gold with the brand”), while the initials $ m / n (moneda nacional) or $ c / l (curso legal) are used for the paper weight.

Argentina Public Finance

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