According to economists Marcos Buscaglia and Dante Sica, Argentina is currently experiencing one of those rare economic nexuses that occurs only once or twice a generation. As the world fragments and globalization shifts toward the control of supply chains, the country possesses exactly what this new global economy demands: food, energy, and mineral security.
However, the analysis they shared during the macroeconomic panel at the “Perspectivas 2026” event, hosted by Cohen, goes far beyond mining in San Juan or “Vaca Muerta”—the geological formation in the Argentine Patagonia that houses one of the world’s largest shale oil and shale gas reserves.
For Sica, former Minister of Production and Labor, Argentina possesses four ecosystems that the world will demand in the coming years: energy, mining, agribusiness, and technology. And it has them “with an attractive market size capacity, a supporting industrial base, and a significant human resources capacity.” The difference compared to previous cycles, he stressed, is that these sectors do not currently face a demand or price problem; their main restriction is execution capacity.
This is where the concrete opportunity for investors and advisors emerges: not in the large companies leading these ecosystems—which generally access international financing—but in the supplier rings surrounding them. “The big players take financing abroad. Then comes the second and third rings, which are the suppliers. You have to look closely there,” Sica pointed out, specifically targeting the metalworking sector and industrial services companies.
Buscaglia, an economist with an extensive background in emerging markets analysis, introduced a relevant conceptual framework: in closed economies, geographic concentration around the main capital is inevitable because it benefits producers to be near the largest consumption center. When an economy opens up and stabilizes, that logic reverses.
“If you give the country stability, openness, better infrastructure, and you lower the cost of capital, a lot of things will emerge, and many of those things will come from the interior,” he argued. He mentioned the case of Córdoba as a potential regional logistics hub—”a two-hour flight from anywhere in the country, like Atlanta in the United States”—and pointed out timber development in Corrientes and Misiones, where there is even talk of installing a cellulose plant, something unthinkable just a few years ago.
Agribusiness, he added, will also benefit for reasons that go beyond a potential reduction in export taxes: the end of the dual exchange rate, advancements in intellectual property, and expansion into new production segments set the stage for sustained growth. As a benchmark for what can happen when openness and stability are combined, he cited the case of Chilean cherries: growing from 35 million dollars exported in 2004 to over 3 billion dollars last year.
Services, Tourism, and Construction: The Urban Opportunity
Beyond the productive interior, both economists identified urban sectors with high development potential, precisely because investment had been practically paralyzed since 2011.
Buscaglia listed several: high-end hospitality—with projects like the renovation of the Plaza Hotel or the Sofitel tower in Puerto Madero—the expansion of shopping centers, and the return of international retail chains that had previously abandoned the Argentine market. “There are a lot of things that were done everywhere else that weren’t done right here in Buenos Aires,” he stated.
Sica elaborated on the role of the service sector as a major driver of future employment. “Future employment is not in industry; it is in services,” he said, pointing to the entertainment, gastronomy, and hospitality complex as one of the largest potential employers for the entire region. To that, he added construction—both infrastructure and private residential, which will stop serving as a store of value once the financial system normalizes—and healthcare services in the interior, where current infrastructure is insufficient for the demand that new investments will generate.
Perhaps the most disruptive takeaway from the panel was Sica’s warning against traditional sectoral analysis. In an economy shifting its relative prices, intersectoral income is redistributed, and within the exact same sector, companies that export, companies that import and revamp their model, and companies that close down can all coexist. “Sectors are not going to disappear; they are going to reassemble and reorganize,” he affirmed.
The example he provided was illustrative: in the home appliances sector, a company from Córdoba exports spin dryers to the United States, another manufactures a single model and completes its product line with imports from Mexico, and a third stopped assembling altogether. Three different business models within the same sector, responding to the same price signals. “Look for business units, see which supply chain they are in,” he recommended to the audience.
Crossing the Desert
Both economists acknowledged that this transformation does not come without costs. Buscaglia described the current situation as “crossing a desert”: the government is executing two massive transformations simultaneously—changing the economic matrix and driving disinflation—which creates inevitable tensions.
Infrastructure bottlenecks in Neuquén, San Juan, and Catamarca are already visible, and the capacity to provide schools, roads, hospitals, and housing at the pace demanded by approved investments is, according to Buscaglia, “in question.”
However, the underlying diagnosis remains optimistic. “If we manage to make these two turns and not die trying, what lies ahead is excellent,” Buscaglia summarized. Sica added a timeline to this outlook: the 25 billion dollars already approved under the RIGI (Incentive Regime for Large Investments, a legal framework approved in 2024 offering fiscal, customs, and exchange rate stability for 30 years to investment projects exceeding 200 million dollars in strategic sectors like energy, mining, and technology) and the 70 billion dollars currently under evaluation will materialize strongly over the next four years, with mining accelerating especially starting this year following the clarification of the regulatory framework on glaciers.
