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14 FROM THE TOP » CARLOS ZARLENGA, GENERAL MOTORS December 2018 | AutoData picture that exactly will happen within Rota’s time period. At the beginning of the interview you praised the Chevrolet dealership chain. Other automakers have recentlyannoun- ced the creation of digital stores.Where is GM in this process? We’ve had this for almost two years. One thing is to say ‘I have digital so- mething’, another thing is to do the transaction digitally, along with your partner. I’m not looking for a great com- pany announcement, I’m looking for business efficiency. industry that has four million units of pro- ductive capacity considering Mercosur, one of the largest markets in the world. We have scale, which is themost difficult, and even so, we can’t be competitive to export. How is it possible that in Uruguay, a totally openmarket, bringing a car from Korea or Mexico is cheaper than bringing it from Argentina and Brazil? Returning the question: how is it pos- sible? This is due to chain-wide inefficiency, combinedwith one of theworld’s highest tax pressures and also by groups that benefit from inefficiency. Privileges are created for the fewones that take chan- ces to generate benefits for many others. Many times the point is placed on top of the automakers, saying that the car is the most expensive in the world in Brazil so the profit is the highest in theworld. This is easy to demystify: there are several balances available out there, just look and see that we do not have the biggest profit in the world - it is very low, by the way. The price is high because the tax share is an absurd. How can the industry growwith such a tax burden? Let’s take, for example, a semiconductor. Just to turn sand into a screen on the dashbo- ard, considering only the labor costs of this process, we pay an additional cost 13% higher compared towhat theworker takes home. Then take the logistics: in Brazil, we have the highest costs in the world in only one single modality, the road. Was there, inyour opinion, a lack of long- -term vision, let’s say...until 2030? The discussion of more or less incentives was a waste of time, the fundamental discussion should have been the long term of the industry, even that the ne- gotiations took longer than they did. The world is becoming electric, and what does the Rota say what about it? There is not even a base for creating a supply chain for that in the program. This is a