The President of the Investment and Foreign Trade Bank (BICE), Mariano de Miguel, visited the city of Neuquén this week. In dialogue with PULSO, he provided details about the bank’s role in promoting production, in a critical economic context.
QUESTION: What is the reason for visiting Nauquén?
ANSWER: Since I began my tenure as president of BICE, we have tried to visit the different regional offices. We usually meet with businessmen and women who could potentially be bank clients or who already are and have projects in the pipeline. We also try to disseminate what BICE does on a daily basis. This time we are going to visit the Tucker and Kleppe companies.
Q: A fruit company and an oil company…
R: Exactly. In fact, the intention is to focus on those sectors that are strategic in each region. Of course, what defines whether or not it is strategic depends on the management on duty. In this case, both for the Ministry of Economy and for the Secretariat of Industry, there are some sectors that are strategic in terms of adding value, generating foreign exchange, substituting imports, generating employment, and also taking into account the particularities of each region. In the case of Comahue, oil, gas, tourism, fruit growing, are sectors that account for the strengths of the province and the two companies illustrate this.
Q: What are the policies and lines of credit that BICE carries out?
R: Although it started out as essentially a second-tier bank and assisted other banks, since its founding BICE has assisted companies. I would say that today is perhaps a fundamental business unit. And as the title of the bank says, the core of the business is already marked there, which is investment in foreign trade. And within foreign trade, mainly exports. For a country like Argentina, everything that generates foreign currency must be privileged. But also smart import substitution. We like to say that BICE is a development bank. And being a development bank means trying to assist or go where commercial banks by their own mandates fail.
Q: Does BICE have any special policies with a gender perspective?
R: Indeed. In general, the bank lends up to 80% of the need for the project in question. But in those companies where half or more of the board of directors are women, or 25% are, but there are women in management positions, we assist up to 100% of the total investment.
Q: Have you recovered leasing as an investment tool?
R: That’s how it is. It is a policy that BICE somehow inherited from Banco Nación at the time and strengthened and developed it. The truth is that this works very well because it has even incorporated the variant of real estate leasing. We also have pre-financing for exports, which is something that is sometimes so difficult in Argentina, both in the traditional format and qualifying foreign banks that can assist companies that want to purchase products from our companies from abroad. Undoubtedly, the core of the bank is investment and trade, with a view to transforming the productive matrix.
For a country like Argentina, everything that generates foreign currency must be privileged. But also smart import substitution. We like to say that BICE is a development bank.
Q: Do you have differential rates with respect to the commercial sector?
R: We have a star line, which was traditionally the development line, with terms of up to 7 years with a 2-year grace period, and a rate of around 49%. I think that in terms relative to the market it is a very competitive rate. In real terms today it is a negative rate, clearly. We already have approximately $30 billion committed to that line. In fact, BICE is the financial arm of a productive policy in particular, and of an economic policy in general. Of course it is a line that is aimed at SMEs, which is our subject par excellence to which we aim.
Q: What is the insertion that BICE has in our region?
R: Throughout the Comahue region, BICE has disbursed $1 billion so far in 2023. In addition, in 2022 it almost doubled the number of clients compared to 2021. We estimate that by the end of this year, the bank will have financed productive projects in this area for more than $2.8 billion.
Q: What is it like to make these types of policies in an inflationary environment like the current one?
R: A priori, the inflation data is somehow an edge condition for us. What we are trying to achieve, because we also have the mandate to do so from the Ministry of Industry, is that our lines somehow allow credit to reach the different sectors, even with negative rates. In a way, what BICE is doing today, as the financial arm of the Ministry of Industry, is investing in rates and investing in making resources available to the productive sector that otherwise would not come so easily.
Q: How do you analyze the current situation of the productive sector?
R: If you look at half the glass full, before the drought Argentina had full employment, and growth in at least 16 industrial sectors. It must be considered that the drought is going to cost some US$25,000 million and that is a problem not only in terms of foreign currency that you lack to later use to import and grow, but also means a drop in revenue. Within this framework, our mandate is put the bank at the service of sustaining employment, activity, and production.
Profile: Mariano de Miguel
Mariano de Miguel has a degree in Economics (UCES) and has postgraduate studies in international relations and development policies for SMEs.
He was director of Banco Provincia de Tierra del Fuego (BTF) (2021-2022) and Undersecretary of Scientific Research and Industrial Policy for Defense at the Ministry of Defense (2019-2021).
He is president of the Argentine Development Bank BICE since September 2022.
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