Located at the heart of the MERCOSUR common market, Argentina occupies only a slightly less prominent place in relation to IIRSA. Currently some 65 projects (including trans-border projects) are slated for implementation within the country’s borders. Together these projects require an estimated investment of $6.6 billion. Nearly all of them fall within 3 integration hubs: Capricorn, MERCOSUR-Chile, and Southern. The vast majority of projects correspond to the energy and multi-modal transport sectors.
Important players in government and business in Argentina have generally taken a favorable stance toward IIRSA, seeing it as the next step in an integrationist agenda that they have pursued via the consolidation of the MERCOSUR common market (with neighboring countries Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay). In the past year, a couple of major Argentine projects have secured the financing necessary to move to appraisal, namely the Buenos Aires-Mendoza railway (financed by CAF) and the Buenos Aires-Bahia Blanca-Tierra del Fuego gas pipeline (financed by BNDES). At the same time, there has been some mobilizing on the part of Argentine CSOs like the Ecological Forum of Paraná and the Center for Human Rights and Environment, which are trying to call attention to the serious environmental risks implied by going forward with such projects.