100 days after the inauguration of Javier Milei, the time has come for a very first assessment in Argentina. If his frenzy of ultra-liberal reforms has experienced setbacks in Parliament where he is in an ultra-minority, the Argentine president insists that he will stop at nothing despite an increasingly tense social climate.
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With our correspondent in Buenos Aires, Théo Conscience
True to his campaign promises,Javier Milei immediately launched his “chainsaw” plan to reduce the Argentine state to its bare minimum.
A number of ministries halved, tens of thousands of civil servant positions eliminated, a drastic reduction in public aid for food and transport and the freezing of public construction sites have enabled it in less than two months to restore order in the public accounts, and even to generate a budget surplus in January and February.
The Argentine president can also boast of having reduced inflation from 25% in December to 13% last month and of having so far succeeded in stabilizing the peso against the dollar. But at what cost do its detractors wonder?
The government’s shock therapy began with a 54% devaluation of the peso, and was accompanied by a loss of purchasing power of 18% of Argentines in less than three months, which weighed heavily on the budget of an increasingly impoverished middle class. According to the Argentine Catholic University, since the election of Javier Milei, 3 and a half million Argentines have fallen into poverty, which now concerns 57% of the population.
Read alsoArgentina: Javier Milei announces to Parliament that he is ready “for conflict” to reform the country