In January, a study revealed that approximately 27 million people in Argentina are living in poverty, with 15% unable to meet their basic food needs. Since taking office in December 2023, President Javier Milei has implemented economic reforms that have intensified hardships, pushing the national poverty rate to a 20-year high of 57.4%. Despite these challenges, a recent poll indicates that 63% of citizens remain supportive of his policies. Today, Milei achieved a significant legislative victory as his comprehensive, albeit scaled-down, economic reform package passed in Congress. This marks an important moment for Milei, who secured crucial backing from the main center-right bloc despite his party holding only 10% of Senate seats and 15% of the lower chamber.
Milei congratulated himself even before the package was adopted by the Senate, addressing the bill, "ley de bases", as "the greatest fiscal adjustment not only in Argentine history but in the history of humanity.".
Milei’s biggest challenge was keeping a political consensus for difficult reforms, with his party holding only 10% of Senate seats and 15% of the lower chamber, but he has allied himself closely with the main center-right bloc, including packing his cabinet with more mainstream conservatives, helping win legislative backing. Originally, the reform laid the foundation of his government's plans and contained more than 600 articles intended to liberalize and deregulate the economy. But after a failed vote last February, the bill was cut to 238 articles, which removed the state airline, post service, and broadcaster from a list of potential privatizations and made adjustments to taxes on high salaries and personal assets.
The law declares a state of economic emergency for one year, during which Milei will be granted additional powers over energy, economic, and financial matters. It also opens the way to privatize several state-owned firms and creates incentives for would-be foreign investors, marking a major pro-market shift for Argentina after years of big government, job protection, and heavy state spending. Another act under the new incentive package is that over $9 billion is committed to the oil and gas sector, while massive investment is also expected in the mining industry.
This week has also marked a historic moment, as it is the first time in 30 years that Argentina has experienced zero inflation for food and drink. Monthly inflation for June 2024 is predicted to be around 4% to 5%, a significant improvement. This is a key indicator of Milei's ability to govern and central to his plans to overhaul the country's troubled economy, which had over 250% inflation, myriad capital controls, drained central bank reserves, a deepening recession, and years of fiscal deficits that have buried the country in debts it has struggled to repay.
In an effort to combat inflation, Milei has implemented a series of stringent policies focusing on reducing government spending, cutting bureaucratic jobs, implementing drastic changes to the country's currency system, and aggressively cutting government departments and state jobs, a move that has resulted in significant job losses but aims to reduce the government's expenditures.
After ending 2023 with a deficit of 4.4% of GDP in the non-financial public sector (NFPS), the first quarter of 2024 saw a fiscal surplus, the first one since 2008. Consumer prices surged by 276.4% in May, marking the first instance of disinflation after eleven consecutive months of price increases, easing from 292.2% in the previous month. According to the Market Expectations Survey (REM) of April 2024, markets expect a substantial reduction in inflation in 2025 compared to 2024, dropping from 161% to 50%.
To address Argentina's currency issues, Milei devalued the peso by over 50%, causing the official exchange rate to jump from 400 pesos to the dollar to 800. This sudden devaluation initially pushed up inflation but also narrowed the gap between the official exchange rate and the parallel market rate from nearly 200% to under 18%.
Milei's economic strategy includes a plan he calls "endogenous dollarization," which involves fixing the supply of pesos and encouraging the use of dollar savings for transactions as the economy grows. This would render the peso a "museum piece," in his words, and lead to the closure of the central bank. He has also promised to eventually remove capital controls to restore investor confidence. He insists that inflation will soon stabilize at 2% per month, matching the rate of devaluation that would ease restrictions and float the peso without its value plunging.
As a libertarian economist, Milei has continuously advocated for using digital currencies as part of his economic reform agenda, envisioning currency competition enabling Argentines to utilize Bitcoin and other digital currencies without government intervention. This approach seeks to lessen dependency on traditional money printing, which Milei says may be achieved by using Bitcoin.
Despite the government facing its second general strike in early May, Milei has managed to secure legislative victories and maintain support for his economic reforms. The libertarian leader remarked that there is no alternative to his "shock therapy" methods to reshape Argentina's economic landscape for the better.