Buenos Aires, December 15 (teleSUR-RHC)-- The Argentinean government of President Mauricio Macri will roll out changes to export taxes and import rules before the end of the year to open up the South American country to foreign companies, local media reported on Monday.

The changes will include eliminating export taxes on big agribusiness corporations producing corn, wheat, and beef, and lowering taxes on soybeans, another of the country’s top agricultural exports.

The export tax reduction plan, promoted by Macri on Monday as a way to boost agricultural production, will break down one of the economic policies used under the governments of former Presidents Cristina Fernandez and Nestor Kirchner to fund social programs and infrastructure projects. 

In March 2015, Fernandez introduced exports taxes on cereal and oilseed crops in the name of benefiting tens of thousands of small and medium-sized producers of soybeans, corn, sunflower seed, and wheat.

Macri’s changes will include doing away with Argentina’s Anticipated Sworn Declaration of Imports regulation, known as DJAI, a 2012 law that requires importing companies to declare goods in advance in the interest of protecting and promoting domestic production.
  
According to Macri’s Minister of Production Francisco Cabrera, scrapping the DJAI, which he characterized as an “abuse regime of pricing information and cost structures and profit margins demanded of companies,” will make way for a “more simple” trade system.

The DJAI rule has been challenged by the E.U., U.S., and Japan through the World Trade Organization investor-state dispute settlement mechanism over claimed trade restriction and infringement on future profits.

Argentina will also be opening its doors to more than 40 foreign clothing brands, which critics say will negatively impact domestic production.

The proposed changes comes after Macri’s Minister of Communication announced plans to repeal Argentina’s Media Law designed to limit the domination of big media corporations and create space for small media outlets. 

Critics say that scrapping the Media Law and its limitations on the size of media conglomerates is a direct assault on a democratic commitment to a diversity of voices in the media and will be a death sentence for alternative opinions in the media.

Macri’s opponents say his proposals will turn the country back to 1990s neoliberalism, rolling back the social welfare programs of Fernandez and her late husband Kirchner, which have benefited poor and working class Argentines.