New Regulation for Deposit Certificates and Warrants: Electronic Issuance Required

Provision No. 76/2019 passed by the Subsecretariat of Agricultural Markets states that as of March 1, 2020, the issuance of deposit certificates and warrants must be instrumented by electronic means, through the website of the Argentine Tax Authority (the “AFIP,” after its acronym in Spanish). In addition, the obligation of depositors to register all their operations on a daily basis will be fulfilled by means of the information that will be directly stored in the electronic issuance system.

Provision No. 76/2019 implements Law No. 9,643 (the “Warrants Law”), which establishes that operations of negotiable instruments on fruits or agricultural, livestock, forestry, mining or domestic manufactured products deposited in warehouses must be made by means of deposit certificates and warrants. According to the Warrants Law, deposit certificates and warrants, which may only be issued by authorized entities, have to specify the date of issue, the name and address of the depositor, the signature of the administrator, the type of product, its quantity and any other relevant information to identify the product. 

Prior to the enactment of Provision No. 76/2019, deposit certificates and warrants were issued by the authorized entities on paper format. Those entities were obliged to:

• Submit to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fishing a monthly affidavit detailing the deposit certificates and warrants issued by the entity during that month, in accordance to Resolution No. 113/1998; and

• Record on a daily basis and in chronological order all the operations in which the entity intervenes, pursuant to the Warrants Law.

The recitals of Provision No. 76/2019 state the necessity of reviewing the deposit certificates and warrants’ system of issuance, especially taking into account that since the enactment of Decree No. 1,131/2016, digitally signed electronic documents have the same effectiveness and evidentiary value as their paper equivalents. As from the entry into force of Provision No. 76/2019, authorized entities must not submit monthly affidavits nor record their operations on a daily basis given that the issuance information will be directly stored in the electronic system, thus improving the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fishing’s control and enabling the collection of statistical data.