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Google Unable To Keep Paying App Developers In Argentina
An anonymous reader writes "Google has sent letters to app developers registered in Argentina saying they won't be able to accept payments on developers' behalf after June 27th. 'The change applies to both paid apps and apps that use in-app purchases. The move appears to be related to new, restrictive regulations the Argentine government has imposed on currency exchanges.' According to the Telegraph, 'The new regulations required anyone wanting to change Argentine pesos into another currency to submit an online request for permission to AFIP, the Argentine equivalent of HM Revenue & Customs. To submit the request, however, you first needed to get a PIN from AFIP, either online or in person. Having finally obtained your number, submitted your online request and printed out your permission slip, you could then present it at the bank or official cambio and buy your dollars. Well, that was the theory. In practice, the result was chaos. ... damming the flood has come at a huge cost to the economy, especially since the currency restrictions were coupled with another set of regulations that effectively imposed a near-total ban on any imported goods.'"
Cristina Kirchner, destroying Argentina since 2007.
If the problem is caused by Google not being able to buy the correct kind of currency, couldn't they have offered to pay the developers in a different currency?
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Here in Brazil we had this kind of policy in the middle '80s. It brought incalculable damage to our economy and to our global competitiveness, together with hyperinflation and other such funny stuff. We finally abandoned this idiocy in the beginning of the '90s and haven't looked back since. Too bad South American countries in general are firm believers in the "But We Are Special!" School of Economics and don't like to do basic stuff such as looking around to see what worked and what didn't to then decide on policies. Argentina is going to suffer a lot in the following years until its government learn the lesson.
For other troubled countries to then disregard, after all, they're special too!
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Argentina (and other South American bureaucracy) are corrupt. Some, more than others. This is the reason why Ralph Lauren had to bribe officials (but got a backlash from the US citizens), just in order to do business in Argentina.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/22/news/companies/ralph-lauren-bribery/index.html
Yay for protectionist, isolationist, centrally-managed, paternalistic government-crawling-up-your-pant-legs regulatory over-reach! So stimulating to the economy.
And imagine the opportunities for bureaucratic mischief as more and more layers are added in between someone who has something to sell, and someone who wants to pay for it.
When people complain about "big government," it's exactly this sort of (somewhat) unintended consequence and life-squashing administrative death by a thousand cuts that is really the concern. Too many byzantine rules and hoops to jump through, with too many low-level, unaccountable functionaries being gatekeepers in their own little fiefdoms. In the US, it looks like the IRS's increasing ugliness (to say nothing of what it will look like when they're policing everyone's individual compliance with ObamaCare requirements).
Domestically, this is what's being referred to as the rise of the Fourth Branch. And it's deadly.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is good news for us Americans here in the United States.
... why Google cannot pay to someone? The restrictions are for the Argentinian (yes, like me) that want to buy foreign currency. The company can send the money to the persons bank account, and the developer will get the money in local currency. Besides, in the link above, in spanish, Google does not say it's reasons. For the moment, with these information at hand, I really don't think these restrictions are the reason. Maybe when Google explain them selfs.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.
Other variations are available.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I live over there. Here's what's going on, I'll try to explain it because even fellow Argentinians don't really understand:
Argentina is a country that is very culturally different to the rest of Latin America, and even the world and likely the right place to look at when you want to see the results of a government being more involved instead of less. By the time of the second world war, Peron did a deep change to the country, created public health, public education (made public university free), public retirement funds, changed labor laws to highly benefit the employees (employeers must pay them many sort of benefits and can't fire them without paying compensation), etc.
Peron tried to made it clear that he wasn't going towards fascism/socialism/communism, but his model was more of creating a capitalism with more social equity through the intervention of the government. Most of the "upper class" did naturally not like this and tried to fight this by financing coup d'etats by the military (It's a little more complex than, but that goes beyond what i'm trying to explain and there's plenty of material to read about dictatorships in Latin America).
My point is that Argentinians are sort of "spoiled" and that has even been transmitted from generation to generation. There is this strange belief that everything that happens is the fault of the government, and that the government should take care of it.
For example, beyond public health, retirement, education, etc. If you are homeless, the government will build you a house. If you are poor and your children can't study, the government will give you money to send them to school. If you are unemployed, you just receive money. Transport is dirt cheap because it's subsidized too, some products are price-fixed to be made more accessible and now the government is even making a line of clothes that is more cheaper and accessible.
The government spends a fortune in social help and taxes are high as the result. But it goes beyond that. The economic model is also designed to ensure that unemployment is really low. They do this by forcing people to spend their money and not keep it, so there is constant inflation and purchasing foreign currency is forbidden. By spending the earned money constantly, the local economy is always very active, restaurants are packed full, and everyone is using credits to buy stuff.
The right wing media opposition to the government is strong and focuses on mainly on corruption and insecurity, to make people feel they are being constantly robbed and freak them out. However, people is employed and is earning decently nowadays so this has a limited effect, which gives place to the saying ("roban pero hacen", translated to "they might steal but they still do for the country") Even the media themselves know they can't mention anything related to a right wing point of view (less state intervention) or people will label them as traitors.
So the big question is if economical stability by this means are worthy. Buenos Aires is a production powerhouse and generates a lot of income, but there is a large part of the population that would not be able to be sustained in a more open economy. As a result, the country is very closed do the rest of the world economy. The rest of the world isn't very healthy economically either.
What's going on with Google is really nothing new. It's extremely hard for Argentinians to be entrepreneurs in this context, so we just open offshore companies in Panama, Delaware or other places and get paid there (otherwise we can't get get paid in us dollars or euros), then transfer our money to the country either illegally (black market price is higher), or legally (needed if you run a company and need to pay your employees). It's not impossible, just harder.
Bullshit. They already don't serve the peoples interests. No need to be reserved about judgement.
...does this mean...BitCoin might actually be...good for something!?
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Im from Argetina, and i can tell u, there is almost no1 that likes this kind of goverment but its dificult for the middle-class people to fight them back. The buy votes and voters... send ppl to kill you or, if u have a store they will break it down and make u pay for thinking an speaking against the goverment.
Almost no1 wants to be like venezuela, we here hated Chavez and we widely hate the venezuela goverment, but sadly enough, we are going to be there... a 2nd venezuela and then, who the fuck knows.... maybe a cuba like country.
Here u r zed that a dollar = 5.60 pesos for the goverment, but u cant buy it... they dont sell.... and be careful not to say out loud u have some dollars at home or u will become an instant target.
Then there is the "blue" dollar, in xchange stores... one dollar = 8.95 pesos but is way too xpensive to buy... imagine buying gadget, a phone, tv, almost anything... take in consideration we have a 21% taxes over the stuff u buy, and a plus 10% for tech stuff, we are doomed.
A 250 dollars item here cost 250x3x7 or 8 or 9.... it depends of the item and the blue dollar... but u can see where im going with this.
Argentina is poor because of it's government.
Simple as that.
You need three things, for a country to be wealthy;
1. low taxes
2. tolerable administration of justice
3. peace
Argentina lacks #1 and #2, where #2 involves for example the Government *not* interfering in your freedom to buy and sell currency.
Argentinian govt bars citizen developers from earning money by developing Google Apps
Would be to do away with the peso all together and switch to using US dollars as standard currency. Nationalistic currency makes as little sense as city specific currency in the modern connected age. A shame the bitcoin is unregulated and unable to inflate/deflate in a manner that would be required to promote the stability required of a global currency.
Problem solved.
Seriously. It is better then having nothing and it is possible the dev could actually cash it in. Bigger devs could have an overseas bank account and get payment into that. Smaller devs could get products delivered to them internationally. It does not solve every problem, but it is better then no payment.
The Argentinian government is going to need something to distract the populous - time for the Falklanders to start digging bomb shelters.
And we travel every year to visit the family. If you say nobody likes the government, but at the same time I see most of my family support it (yes, we are a very small portion of the population), and Cristina Fernández won the last elections (and the economic measures we are arguing here were already in place) with 58% (against 16% of the second-best candidate)... I find it quite hard to swallow that you say "nobody likes the government". No, there is no suc violence or vote buying as you mention (and I as a Mexican can very well spot vote buying and coertion). What happens is that we seldom see beyond our class-level. The country has over 40 million people, many of them way poorer than your average Slashdot poster. And they have really got their lives better since the ultra-free-market nonsense of the 1990s was stopped, after the big 2001-2002 crisis.
As a middle-class Mexican, I'd love to have the public education, health and security systems Argentina has. In fact, those three are important reasons why we regularly consider moving there.
It used to be to maintain a level playing field in the U.S.
Now it has become a way to get unionized government workers of all stripes to get paid so high (twice the average worker pay) with such good benefits that those workers will automatically vote in more politicians who give them even more pay, while those politicians and ex-politicians and their staffers get exhobitant "benefits" in lobbying, executing and running the "government" programs, however inefficient & duplicative.
Welcome to the USA, United Socialists of America. We change or we merge with Argentina into a true USofA.
While I love bashing the govenment and their stupid monetary policy as much as the next guy (I honestly don't think the president understands how money works), currency exchange policies have nothing to do with this particular situation. Google pays the local developers in local currency, and there's no restrictions to exchange USD to Pesos, you can just walk into any bank with foreign currency, and they'll exchange it for you (at a shitty rate, but again, that's not Google's problem, they're just paying the developers in compliance with the local laws). Money is coming into the country, not going out, the govenment has no problem with that.
If I had to guess (which I do because there's no information about this so far) I'd say it's not worth it for them to keep offices here to deal with paying the local developers, since they're not allowed to take their profits from other services out of the country (due to the exchange restrictions), so there's no point in having local operations.
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I don't see the connection. How can a law designed to strengthen the peso (by prohibiting ARS -> USD conversion) be a problem for developers selling apps priced in USD? (This would imply USD -> ARS conversion, which is what the Argentine goverment wants.)
Finally. Someone with some senses.
this not only happens with Google. all foreing operations in the country are halted.
In Argentina THERE ISN'T ANY RESTRICTION if you are receiving foreign payments in any currency!!! IT'S a lie!!
I live in Argentina working for european and asiatic companys, in the last 11 years they pay me with bank transfers in u$s and euros then i got AR$ at the official rate in my local bank.
I don't really understand what Google is doing here...
what you people dont really understand is that the goverment is using those dollars to PAY the WORLD the debt the FMI forced the argentine goverment to adquire in the 90's (corrupt goverment, failed neo-con policies, just like europe now) . its not like "uh goverment is bad, restricting free US dollar hoarding" its like they need those dollars to actually pay DEBT, tons of dollars to pay debt and energy the country need for its blooming economy
So, basically, if you want to host the files yourself, and do the e-commerce yourself and get the shitty exchange rate yourself, then the government is totally OK with that. But if you want to pay Google to do the e-commerce and currency exchange and file hosting by taking a cut of your profit, then the government will make that very hard. One of the benefits of the international market is discoverability. I don't have to get folks to come to my website to buy my product, they can buy it in the world wide app market via simple search term. This is a benefit the government is making harder for the people to leverage. That is an issue. The end result is that since you can't get any discovery, or take advantage of the cheap hosting and commerce and customer relations (refunds), etc., you can't afford to develop apps.
Isolated economies are over. This is the Information Age. Adapt or become Extinct.
Even you don't have map information. Argentina is a weak and old country respect to IT.
I'm in the outsourcing business and we're fleeing Argentina ASAP. They seem bent on some kind of fascist autarky.
By design, the number of bitcoins will level out at 21 million, ergo deflationary. End of story (but not the arguments). As a short term salve for Argentine devs, bitcoin payment is better than nothing, but nothing more than yet another ephemeral method of flight from the peso.
Ultimately, Argentina's monetary problems will continue their traditional cycles until its social spending is ramped down to something its economy's surplus value can sustain. Given that the financing machinations haven't yet hit a wall too high to climb (as it almost did in the early 'aughts) and that it maintains an income stream to the mass of Argentines, I don't foresee a change in the general flow of the thing.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Just pay through secret Swiss bank accounts.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It is not the figure given that is confusing, it's the concept.
Start with 1 unit of currencyA equivalent to 2.2 units of currencyB.
After a while currencyB has depreciated by 900%. And what the hell does that mean? Don't ask journalists, ask yourself.
The orthodox theory that if big capitals are happy the economy will be ok has already failed here un Argentina, and ended up with 25% unemployment. Perhaps not Google or JP Morgan, but someone is happy with Kirchner's economic model, as it's party won it's third-in-a-row presidential election with 54% of the votes. No crisis here, at least for the working class. When some economist critizes Argentina or Ecuador or Bolivia or Venezuela for that matter, go see what that genius said about the US before the sub-prime crisis, or about Spain or Greece. You might find those oracles have interests, which probably are not your own.
will fix this?
Google are not trading in Argentina, because they have effectively closed the loop hole that allows them to pass the buck on to App Developers to pay all local taxes. Google Play is quite different to the other stores, where Google work as a "payment provider", not "point of sale". It looks like Argentina's rules require companies to be more closely linked to Argentina. With Apple/Blackberry/Microsoft this does not cause an issue - they already have a strong presence in selling services there. Google operate much more virtually, choosing not to be present in any jurisdiction that might cause issues, and providing their services over the wire. With Play they charge 32.6% (yes they also charge you in addition to the 30% a 1.6-3.2% "handling fee" depending on volume!), and then offer the developers nothing - no support, tax, administration etc. They effectively give you a download site linked to Paypal in a unified spot, and then play "sloped shoulders" on their responsibilities. All other Appstores offer considerable value for sorting out selling internationally for steep entry fee of 30%. Actually at low volumes the 30% is a steal, given the complexities of dealing with places like Argentina. Google are once again trying to strong arm Governments around the world to go with their world view - as they are in many other areas. When the government in question doesn't like Google's view, they pull back and it becomes a stand off. Such is the breadth of their power they can even do this in the first world - though they then to fold quicker. Luckily there are many other equally rich companies willing to take them on (qv Apple, Microsoft, Samsung et al), but we seem to be entering a phase where national governments are looking increasingly toothless against the internet giants. Some may see this response this is a corporate dystopian view of the world, and perhaps it is. However until governments begin to reassert and more importantly adapt their rules with these companies we'll continue to slide in this direction. Why do I think this is bad? Because large companies goals are ultimately competitive. Even the best intentioned company is aligned to different objectives. Google have smashed competition in many areas unrelated to theirs. They have been allowed to because of the pleasure they give to the public with their drug-dealer style approach to business (first hit is free). Its not a vote winner to tell the populi "You can't have this for free". Far easier to give them the latitude to grow uncontrolled, and then pick up the pieces afterwards. Take a look at Maps, App for business, and Gmail/Google Drive etc to see where its going. Superb products - don't get me wrong, but the free has slowly become a hook of free "for a while". It means the market becomes moribund to new players after a certain level of saturation has been achieved. This is not a good thing.
Hello Argentinian google play developers,
OrigoTerra can help by funnelling your earnings back to you in dollars in Argentina for a small fee. Contact us for more info at http://en.origoterra.com/contact-us/
OT Team