slowly. Selectively. With very successful winners and very losers. More importantly, the majority of workers are outside the former. In short, Argentina will grow in 2026, as it did in 2025. If predictability is a positive quality of the macroeconomy, any citizen can know whether they will participate in this roughly 5% improvement or whether they will be left out.
In the group of winners there are energy, oil and gas (also known as Vaca Muerta), agriculture in its various variants (with the potential for a beef star if the North American market opens) and mining (the country’s new El Dorado). If the will is put in place, there are also marketers of imported products in almost the entire network in these sectors, including not only those destined for final consumption, but also suppliers of capital and intermediate goods. Online sales can also be added, where 21% of finished products sold to the public are actually consumed; This percentage seems to grow until it becomes a majority.
scary. The list of losers is probably very long. And with a serious problem. These are the sectors and regions where labor is most labor intensive; The crisis consequently leads to the dismissal of more workers. What makes matters worse is that employees often live in a dependency relationship inherited from other golden ages. In this aspect there are three main areas for any economic plan that prides itself on being a contributor to sustainable growth over time: construction, trade and manufacturing. Economic history books will say that no economic recovery plan can succeed without these three sectors at home. A sentence that also includes liberal experiments in the past, such as the 1990s and the stalled Operation Macrista. Adding to the bad times are textiles, domestic tourism and producers of goods such as toys, plastics, tools and other finished products, which directly discuss their viability.
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There are those who fight for a draw. Automotive industry, real estate, fishing and some food production; Which debates whether or not they have a place in the green billing brand network.
News was announced this week in Indec, directed by Marco Lavagna, that the country did not enter a recession in the third quarter of the year. For this to happen, the economy would have had to decline in activity for two consecutive quarters. It had already fallen by 0.1% between the second and first quarters of the year, and it was only in the July-September period that the poor performance needed to be repeated. With controversy (because it was corrected data, which is perfectly normal for aggregate measures), the final September result decided that the economy was officially able to grow by 0.5% during the year, giving up the possibility of a recession. He also confirmed that the trend during the year is a total increase ranging between 4.5% and 5% for the entire year 2025. Data that will be confirmed when the final data for this year is known. This will be at the end of February 2026. But in the end, it will be a positive year. Same as 2026
Finance, yes. However, the data should not cause dizziness or decisive optimism. The biggest hit in September was financial intermediation, with growth reaching 39.7% year-on-year; fishing by 58.2% year-on-year (recovering much of the land lost in previous months); Real estate and commercial activities: +5% year on year; Obviously mining and energy, with the classic monthly advance of 3% to 5% flat and steady. Dead cow through. Neuquén deposits are truly the engine of the economy. And the biggest winner at this moment.
In 2025, Vaca Muerta consolidated a strong jump in production and exports, and 2026 is expected to see even greater expansion, with record investments and a 22% increase in activity. Production from the Neuquén field (and some Mendoza fields) contributed 65.5% of the national crude oil and 72% of gas. Crude oil exports grew by 52% year-on-year, reaching about US$7.5 billion, becoming the country’s second-largest export complex, after soybean meal. The energy trade balance will exceed the positive figure of US$5 billion this year (when it was in deficit even two seasons ago) and is heading towards US$10 billion of favorable contributions from 2027.
The field is another winner. In 2025, Argentine agricultural production reached approximately 131 million tons, and in 2026, agricultural production is expected to reach between 140 and 143 million tons, with an estimated income of more than US$32 billion. According to the Buenos Aires Grain Stock Exchange and the Rosario Stock Exchange, by 2026, total production will range between 140 and 142.6 million tons (+8.9% compared to 2025), with one star outside the traditional soybean contribution. Corn will contribute about 58 million tons (+18.4%). The third victorious sector is mining, which in 2025 reached record exports of more than US$5.3 billion, driven by lithium, while investments for 2026 are expected to reach more than US$7.5 billion and a new jump in production and exports.
On the other hand, the losers pile up. Conclusions can now be drawn about what will happen in 2025. Industrial sectors are in decline during 2025. The percentage of defeat begins in a sector called textiles, clothing and footwear, with a decline of about 10%, and it appears that more than 380 companies closed their doors until the middle of the year, with the loss of 11,500 formal jobs. The combination of falling consumption due to the continuing loss of purchasing power and competition from imports has directly blown up the sector. Mainly for SMEs.
It continues, in the category of waterfalls, in construction and associated materials. Here we must remember a devastating factor: the lack of public works during the first two years of Javier Miley’s administration. To this we must add an exceptional (and unjustified) growth in the building value per square meter in the AMBA area, which by November exceeded US$1,200 and in some cases reached US$1,500. To get an idea of the relationship, in 1998, when convertibility was deteriorating, the same value was worth $800. Many remember that a large part of the success of the Minimista-Cavalista Plan of the 1990s was precisely that it involved a constructive explosion in the country, enabling, perhaps for the last time, the middle class to own property. None of this exists in these libertarian times. In addition to the construction sector itself, the decline in activity affects supplying industries such as ceramics, bricks, cement, metalworking and openings. All are labor intensive.
In chaos. The metal industry, the mother of all industrial battles and the key to the history of Creole manufacturing, is experiencing one of its worst moments in decades. According to the Association of Sectoral Chambers of Metallurgical Industry of the Argentine Republic (ADEMRA), there was a 4.6% year-on-year decline in October, with strong declines in strategic sectors. It is reported that as a result, the sector is -17.7% below its recent maximum levels and with installed capacity utilization near 44.3%, while it has to struggle at 75% to be able to consider investments. To get an idea, it’s a similar percentage to what it was from March to June 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. Declines are spread across the foundry (-12.7%), electrical equipment and appliances (-8.6%), capital goods (-3.9%), auto parts (-2.5%), and agricultural machinery (-0.8%) sectors, while auto bodies and trailers were the only ones that rose by 2.6%. According to Ademra President Elio Del Rey, he warned that “the metals industry is going through a very complex moment, with exceptionally low levels of activity, similar to those experienced in a terrible year like 2024, and with imports growing by about 70% year-on-year.” Regionally, the largest declines occurred in Buenos Aires (-7.7%), Mendoza (-4.4%), Cordoba (-3.7%), and Santa Fe (-2.2%); Specifically the provinces where most of the mineral industries are located.
In the case of consumption, the Indec indicator was clear this week. Sales in supermarkets not only grew in constant prices, but showed a decline of -0.8% year-on-year and -0.2% between October and September. Online sales are said to be growing, already accounting for 21% of operations. It also does not cover the total loss. The concern arises in official statements. The proportion of credit card purchases in supermarkets now reaches 44.1%, while until last year it did not exceed 15%. Conclusion: Families borrow the card to buy food. In the area of shopping, the situation has been bad since the start of the adjustment. In October, this trend continued and reached a decline of -3.4% year-on-year. But the worst situation is the position of wholesalers, who, as a result of lower inflation (and the fact that warehousing is no longer a business), showed the largest decline in the consumption category by -13.1% year-on-year between September and October.
Guillermo Oliveto, an expert on economic development and consumption, president of the consulting company W, spoke this week at a seminar on the SME sector organized by Banco Ciudad. He specified that consumption today is concentrated in the upper middle and upper classes, while the lower middle and upper classes face a restrictive scenario, “where the month ends on the 15th or 20th” and purchasing turns “from emotional to long suffering.” Oliveto emphasized that the economy of the Miley era depended on “agriculture, banking, and mining,” while “commerce, construction, and industry” declined. All this, according to the specialist, with a salary level currently 25% lower than the governments of Mauricio Macri and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
The positive part of the prognosis is that Argentina is growing and will continue to do so. The downside is that most winners cannot accommodate losers. The other problem is that the rise in economic activity will happen slowly. Without revolutionary or sudden changes. Except in the performance of losers.