Auto parts deficit will reach $ 10 billion

The Brazilian autoparts manufacturers have 33% of their foreign sales focused on Argentina. From January to August, registered 28.4% of fall in the values exported to the country, for $ 1.86 billion. This performance has a strong negative impact on the result of the balance of trade in the sector, which should end the year with record deficit of $ 10 billion. Until August, the negative balance was $ 6.6 billion, according to the National Union of the automotive vehicle components industry (Sindipeças).
In the case of automakers, the situation is also complicated because, apart from the lack of dollars to pay for exports to Argentina recently launched a plan to encourage the purchase of cars just for models produced locally. Last month, General Motors has suspended exports to the country and will only resume when there is demand, says Jaime Ardila, President of GM South America. Last year the company exported 80 thousand vehicles for the Argentine market, volume this year should not exceed 30 thousand.
"The crisis in Argentina strongly impacted our exports, with 50% drop this year, directly affecting our production", says Philipp Schiemer, President of Mercedes-Benz of Brazil. "For this reason, along with the current situation of the Brazilian market, we had to adapt our production volume and adopt various mechanisms to deal with this drop in demand, as POV, short week, clearances and lay-off."
At PSA Peugeot Citroën, sales to Argentina account for 30% to 35% of production and fell 35% from 2013. The Group also exports to Uruguay, Paraguay and Colombia, but Argentina is the largest buyer of brand products.
To adapt their production to domestic sales and exports, PSA closed the third work shift, put 650 workers on lay-off and after they all left the factory in a POS program.
Exception
Toyota is an exception. Richard Bahar, General Manager of governmental relations says the company has reduced in 30% sales of the Corolla model for Argentina, but, on the other hand, has increased the Etios, released at the end of 2012. With this, the results are positive, with a high of 20% in exports towards 2013.
He admits that Brazil is very dependent on Argentina, in part because the growth of the domestic market until 2012 drew the "momentum" of exports. "Now the situation has changed; the Brazilian market is not growing and Argentina is no longer interesting. " The output is trying to regain markets in South America, action that Toyota has been working hard, says the Executive.