La Base Exportadora Argentina : 1994-2002

Much has been written about the Argentine exporting performance during past years. However, the analyses have been focused in export amounts, the different type of products and the countries or regions of destiny. In contrast, less attention has been put on the evolution of the exporting firms, i.e. the set of companies with exports in a certain year. Nevertheless, such an analysis is important not only to complement studies of the exporting performance of Argentina but also to contribute to design policies for exports promotion. The aim of this paper is to assess a characterization of the Argentine exporting firms for the period 1994-2002, analyzing the evolution of the number of firms and, particularly, their continuity in the exporting activity. In this work, we find that Argentina counted on a large number of exporting firms but with a low level of exports by firm. A significant concentration of the amount of exports in this period was also verified. In fact, while a set of companies presented a high level of insertion in the international market, the rest made smaller operations and showed a discontinuous behavior in their external sales. In average, almost 3,000 companies began with the exporting activity per year, whereas a similar number retired; only 20% of the exporting base conducted operations in every year of the analyzed period. Near three quarters of the companies exported less than 50,000 dollars when starting in the exporting activity, mainly manufactures, with sales preponderantly to the neighboring countries of the MERCOSUR.