Argentina Calling!

Argentina was once famous for its bureaucracy, but now if you take the time to sit down and have a cup of coffee with someone then the doors open magically. It’s a country with a complicated history so people are used to helping each other out.

Their motto is simple

“I do this for you and you do this for me and together we form a human chain to help each other out”

In the words of the newly elected prime minister of Spain, Mariano Rajoy, “1,200 young Spaniards are immigrating to Argentina each year”.

The figures might sound a bit exaggerated but a mass migration of young Europeans is nevertheless clearly evident in the streets of Buenos Aires. Most of them come from Spain and Italy but some are from Britain. The large majority of young Europeans in Argentina work under the radar of the Migrations Department, residing as students or travelling back and forth to neighboring Uruguay to renew their tourist visa every three months. But figures for official residency permits for Europeans have about doubled in the past five years, to a projected 2,000 for this year.

What do Entrepreneurs feel?

A lack of adequate financing is often seen as a cause of economic stagnation for businessmen and entrepreneurs, but in Argentina it’s more a symptom of something graver: persistent uncertainty and instability. “Money is not the problem,” says Zoltan Acs, a professor of public policy at George Mason University in Virginia. “The problem is, Does the country reward people for effort?

Acs says that nonprofits like Endeavor Argentina, which provides free legal and accounting advice to entrepreneurs and connects start-ups to more established companies, have helped. But in Argentina, even the most successful entrepreneurs are never entirely sure how safe and secured they are.

However, Buenos Aires still continues to be a favored option for the young and the restless:

It is the commercial, financial, industrial and cultural hub of Argentina. Its port is one of the busiest in South America; crossable rivers by way of the Rio de la Plata connect the port to north-east Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. As a result it serves as the distribution hub for a vast area of the south-eastern region of the continent.

The city’s services sector is diversified and well-developed by international standards, and accounts for 76% of its economy. Advertising, in particular, plays a prominent role in the export of services at home and abroad. The financial, business and real-estate services sector is the largest, however, and contributes to 31% of the city’s economy.

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