Argentina crisis prevention filings hit 2025 total in seven months

Chapter Eleven-style bankruptcy proceedings, known as Procedimientos Preventivos de Crisis (or PCC in Spanish) in Argentina, are speeding up – in the first seven months of this year, authorities received as many requests as in the entirety of 2025, according to a request for access to public information filed by Perfil with the Human Capital Ministry. The mechanism, used in times of company "emergency," aims to avoid mass dismissals or a firm's outright closure.

The numbers point to an acceleration: up to July 31, the Human Capital Ministry had opened 163 files – almost matching the 164 registered in all of last year, and far exceeding the 131 procedures logged in 2024, according to the official response.

PPCs, administered by the Labour Department, give companies on the brink of imminent bankruptcy margin to manoeuvre – allowing them to apply mass suspensions, or dilute the cost of dismissal by authorising reduced severance payments. 

According to the report sent by the government to Perfil, 24 of the cases ended in agreement, 42 remain in progress, and 19 were closed or placed on temporary hold.

"It seems appropriate to mention the dynamism of the PPC administrative files, given their nature, i.e. with the passage of time aspects such as the status [of the company], the number of workers and the measures proposed, among others, may be modified," explained the Human Capital Ministry.

In 30 months of President Javier Milei's government, PPCs totalled 458. In 2024, economic activity fell 1.7 percent, but the following year GDP grew 4.4 percent. Despite that rebound, this year and last have seen receivers called in more often than in 2017 – one of two peak years under the Mauricio Macri administration, with a total of 158 – and are on track to match 2018, when the figure reached 183. Both years saw GDP slump, by 2.5 percent and 2.2 percent respectively. 

The all-time peak came in 2020, under the Alberto Fernández administration, with 498 – at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Weight of recession

In mid-2026, Argentina’s EMAE (Estimador Mensual de la Actividad Económica) index, run by the INDEC national statistics bureau, showed interannual growth of 2.7 percent, driven mainly by sectors such as mining, fisheries, agriculture and energy. Sectors like industry, commerce and construction – the most labour-intensive, and the biggest contributors to GDP – are growing far more slowly, posting monthly and interannual falls of up to five percent.

The correlation is clear: sectors most closely tied to the productive economy are increasingly turning to PPC crisis tools simply to stay afloat, in the hope of an eventual recovery. 

According to Federico Filippini, the chief economist of Adcap Grupo Financiero, the current year will end in growth below the expected three percent with the positive terrain thanks to the statistical lag from 2025, around two percent.

The Universidad de San Andrés (UDESA) has assured that the slump in the second quarter of this year wiped out the rebound in the first after marking a decline of 0.89 percent. 

The Analytica consultancy estimated that July was the worst month, with a projected dip of 1.1 percent. For construction, MAP consultants adjusted their forecast to 2.4 percent, while the Central Bank's REM (Relevamiento de Expectativas del Mercado) market expectations survey put growth at 2.1 percent.

Since the change of government in late 2023, the domestic economy has shed 30,633 companies, representing the destruction of six percent of the total matrix of formal employers, according to the survey updated every month by Fundar. 

This is the worst fall registered in the productive fabric in the first 30 months of any government. Taking the latest available figure from last May, 2,371 companies had closed down, completing 16 consecutive months of decline and 27 on an interannual basis.
 

Finances and payment chain

The companies still standing are doing so under red and amber alerts. The payment chain is the main link in the tension: at least 47 percent of industrial companies have struggled to meet some of their financial obligations, and 9.2 percent have failed to meet all of them, according to data from the Unión Industrial Argentina (UIA) industry group.

Company arrears in the financial system have also increased fivefold in under two years, from 0.7 percent in November 2024 to 3.7 percent last July, according to the Equilibra consultancy firm, although far off its historic peaks. 

In absolute terms, the number of firms in default have jumped from 16,212 to almost 37,500, affecting 13.4 percent of all indebted companies.

The impact is heaviest on the nation’s PyMEs, or small and medium-sized enterprises. For loans under five million pesos – a bracket covering 60 percent of PyMEs – the irregularity rate soars to 9.3 percent. Broken down by sector, construction (7.7 percent) and retail trade (6.5 percent) head up the credit arrears, with both also experiencing marked falls in output.

Between the third quarter of 2025 and the second of this year, total arrears on payment plans doubled. Among manufacturers, one segment illustrates the gravity of opening up the economy to imports: the sector of textiles and leather accumulates arrears of 14.6 percent.

Closures and dismissals

Among the latest examples highlighted by the Fundar think tank, the textile company Will Der shut its Las Flores plant (Buenos Aires Province) and blocked the entry of 120 workers at its Pacheco site, pointing directly to the sectorial crisis with more flexible Customs duties. 

Multinational Unilever is advancing with the closure of its dehydrated-vegetable plant in Mendoza, laying off 60 workers, citing changing consumer habits. Meanwhile, the historic Mar del Plata supermarket chain Toledo paid out barely 40 percent of July salaries, following a year of systematic labour conflicts.

La Granja Tres Arroyos let go 250 workers at its poultry plant, citing falling domestic prices and the closure of export markets on sanitary grounds. Sweet-biscuit manufacturer Tía Maruca shuttered their plant in San Juan Province definitively after reporting that they could barely maintain 52 percent of their installed capacity in operation, battered by consumer depression.

In the north, garment firm Catamarca signed its death certificate for the end of this month. The textile company, which once employed 150 people, had already reduced its payroll due to unsold stock it could not offload. It will close with just 20 employees remaining. 

Finally, household appliance firm Peabody has announced it will end local production after 16 uninterrupted years in the country. It has already dismantled its machinery to transfer production to Paraguay, betting instead on a pure-import model, after calling in receivers over liabilities of 40 billion pesos (some US$26.5 million at the official exchange rate).