Overview
- The decree under PACIC sets duty‑free caps of 70,000 tonnes for beef and 51,000 tonnes for pork from non‑FTA countries, with an import tariff applied beyond those limits.
- Quotas run from January 6 through December 31, 2026, and importers must hold cupo certificates issued by the Economy Ministry to access duty‑free volumes.
- Producer groups CNOG, Opormex and AMEG endorsed the policy as providing legal certainty and protecting domestic output, citing benefits for roughly 750,000 cattle producers and longer‑term competitiveness goals.
- The government says the measures result from coordinated work by the Agriculture, Economy and Finance secretariats to ensure market stability and food supply.
- Consultancy GCMA criticizes the auction‑based allocation as a price‑raising, speculation‑prone mechanism and warns the pork quota may not match industrial demand, with critics also noting CONAMER technical comments were not reflected in the final text.