CFI and Four Governors Open Second Federal Logistics Summit

The secretary general of the Consejo Federal de Inversiones (CFI), Ignacio Lamothe, led, together with the governors of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof; of Córdoba, Martín Llaryora; of Entre Ríos, Rogelio Frigerio; and of Santiago del Estero, Elías Suárez, the official opening of the second edition of the Federal Logistics Summit, held at the Centro de Convenciones of the City of Buenos Aires under the slogan "Toward competitive logistics for federal development." The meeting seeks to consolidate an integrated logistics agenda that boosts the country's productive development, within the framework of the Federal Logistics Strategy that the CFI and the provinces have been promoting for the past five years.

That Federal Logistics Strategy was launched in 2021 at the request of the Norte Grande region and later extended to the rest of the country, generating a portfolio of more than 1,100 projects involving airports, border crossings, railways and ports, which was presented at the first edition of the Summit in August 2024. For the port sector, the initiative includes the Port Competitiveness Plan, drawn up together with the eleven provinces that have terminals, aimed at repositioning waterborne transport as a competitive logistics alternative, while the Paraná-Paraguay Waterway was mentioned in the speech given by the governor of Entre Ríos.

The event brought together national and provincial authorities, CEOs and leading figures from the country's main productive and logistics sectors, with the aim of analyzing the impact of logistics on mining, hydrocarbons, agribusiness and manufacturing industry. Also taking part were the governors of Chubut, Ignacio Torres; of Jujuy, Carlos Sadir; of Río Negro, Alberto Weretilneck; and of San Juan, Marcelo Orrego, along with executives from companies such as YPF, Pan American Energy, Tecpetrol, Mercado Libre, DHL, Andreani, FedEx, Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, Louis Dreyfus Company, Rio Tinto, Glencore, Holcim and Techint, as well as officials from the National Government such as Cabinet Chief Diego Santilli and the Minister of Deregulation and State Transformation, Federico Sturzenegger.

The diagnosis running through the summit placed logistics infrastructure at the center of the productive agenda, pointing to needs regarding roads, railways, ports and international border crossings. Among the concrete priorities were the development of corridors linked to mining projects in the north and Cuyo region, infrastructure upgrades to keep pace with the growth of Vaca Muerta, and greater use of rail transport to cut costs. Jujuy plans to double its lithium exports, from around 80,000 to 160,000 tons per year, while in San Juan, where 83% of the territory is mountainous, mining expansion requires roads and power supply to sustain operations.

Governors and executives from companies such as YPF, Tecpetrol, Rio Tinto and Techint argued that the infrastructure deficit could undermine the competitiveness of projects enabled under the RIGI. Weretilneck noted that 95% of Vaca Muerta's supplies enter and leave via national routes 151 and 22, which he described as overwhelmed, while Orrego stated that San Juan's 20-year mining outlook implies as many as one heavy-duty truck every 46 seconds. Sadir pointed out that Jujuy's lithium cargo leaves via National Route 52 toward Chile through the Jama Pass, which has deteriorated due to lack of investment, since the region's rail branch lines were shut down in the 1990s.

The closing session of the day was led by Santilli and Sturzenegger in the panel "Logistics without bottlenecks," focused on the regulatory, institutional and operational bottlenecks of the national logistics system. Sturzenegger stated that rail transport can enable cost reductions of between 40% and 60%, while Lamothe stressed that, as an organization of the provinces, the CFI's task is to turn the consensus reached into concrete roadmaps and projects, in line with the Federal Logistics Strategy.