| Angel Vespa: “We may not keep growing at the same rate we had been” |
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| martes, 11 noviembre 2008 | ||||||||
 Angel Vespa Bodegas de Argentina, the professional business association that brings together most of the country's wineries elected new authorities for the 2008-2009 term. Ángel Vespa is the institutional relations manager of bodega Chandon and will now be taking over from Juan José Canay, of Bodega Trapiche, who served three terms. The newly elected vice-president is Luis Steindl of Bodegas Norton. - What are the most relevant issues you will tackle as you assume the presidency? One of the issues I want to take care of concerns the National Grape-growing and Winemaking Institute becoming more of a facilitator for the sector. Another issue implies demanding provincial and national governments to ask the Foreign Department to arrange the signing of bilateral agreements through Mercosur, in order to gain access to markets without having to pay tariffs, just like Chile and other countries do. Moreover, one of the key points in this new term in office will be that of energy. We must solve the energy problem as it is to become the main concern in the future. With regard to tourism, we need to improve the roads network, which is very poor especially here in Mendoza. We are working on this through the Tourism Committee of Bodegas de Argentina. - In the face of the financial crisis, how do you envision the future of the wine industry? The crisis will doubtlessly affect the wine industry. Hence, it is very important to see credit return, as it is urgently needed by the industry for its work capital. Also, we are already seeing the resentment in the payment chain and the situation gets even worse with the lack of credit. In the short term, we will try to get banks to provide assistance for wineries through normal rates. Otherwise, the situation will get harder. Nevertheless, despite these hardships, I believe that Argentinian wines have something on their side: they have the perfect price-quality ratio and that is something that will have a lot of significance in the foreign markets. However, we cannot turn our backs to the real scene; wine consumption may drop as wine is a dispensable good and that will affect us one way or another. Anyways, our main concern regards a possible decline in consumption in our country rather than outside. There we will have a big problem in terms of stock, something that will affect the next harvest. - Do you think exports will maintain their upward trend? We may not keep growing at the same rate we have been -20% in terms of volume and 30% in terms of FOB value. Perhaps we will grow at a lesser rate. However, the country's conditions are interesting so we must keep working. At the moment, the companies are probably analyzing their foreign sales, making a balance of their 2008 commitments and planning for next year bearing in mind the crisis. Argentina has interesting quality and price conditions so we believe it has potential to keep growing. - How do you evaluate wine tourism in Argentina and what are the main concerns with regard to it? The wine routes are a great shortcoming in Argentina. At Bodegas de Argentina we are working hard to improve them as we believe they are an important resource for wineries to promote themselves and their wines around the world. The institution is aiming at wine tourism and has assigned staff to work specially on this. An agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank and with the Federal Investment Council has just been signed through the wine producing provinces in order to receive credit to strengthen and develop wine tourism in Argentina. We believe that the development of this project will be very important as it is a tool for fostering, improving and boosting wine tourism in particular and tourism as a whole. - With regard to the exemption of domestic taxes on sparkling wine, do you believe it has favored investment? When the tax reform was carried out, sparkling wines were the only ones that remained taxed, and that was a small category experiencing considerable growth, but having much aggregate value. This agreement was jointly achieved by Bodegas de Argentina, the national government and the Ministry of Economy, with the support of the wine-producing provinces. This decision has surpassed the industry's expectations, as investments have added up to 222% with regard to taxes.
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