Barely invested, the new Argentine president went on the offensive by signing a decree on Wednesday, December 20, allowing the modification or repeal of more than 300 standards, including those on rents, privatizations and labor law.
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Freedom was the battle cry of candidate Milei during the electoral campaign. “The objective is to begin the path towards rebuilding the country, returning freedom and autonomy to individuals and beginning to disarm the enormous amount of regulations that have held back, hindered and prevented economic growth in our country,” said Javier Milei in a speech broadcast on radio and television on Wednesday.
Among the measures announced are the repeal of the law governing rents and laws preventing the privatization of public companies such as the airline Aerolineas Argentinas Or the YPF oil group. Public companies will all be transformed into public limited companies with a view to their privatization, said Javier Milei. The Head of State also announced a “ modernization of labor law » to create more jobs, changing the Companies Act so that football clubs can transform into limited companies, and a long series of other deregulatory measures in the tourism, health, internet, air transport, pharmacy, viticulture and even commerce.
The decree was published at midnight in the Official Journal. It will be submitted to parliamentarians but Javier Milei does not have a majority in both chambers. Mr. Milei’s far-right party, La Libertad Avanza, has only 40 seats out of 257 in the Lower House and only seven seats in the Senate out of 72. It will therefore have to seek support from the center-right coalition Juntos por el Cambio, partially allied with Mr. Milei and which has 81 deputies and 24 senators, and with 26 deputies and eight independent senators. The Peronist opposition has 105 deputies and 33 senators, and the left has five deputies.
These new announcements come a few days after the decision of the new president – inaugurated on December 10 – to devalue the peso by more than 50% and reduce transport and energy subsidies. Javier Milei, who was elected on a program of “cutting” the State, wants to reduce public spending to 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Argentina has been involved in “a series of crises over the last hundred years which all have the same origin: the budget deficit”, he justified in his speech.
The presidential address was greeted by a concert of protests in several neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, and thousands of people spontaneously took to the streets near the Parliament to express their rejection, despite an impressive police force supervised by the president and the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich.
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(with AFP)