Luis Caputo: “In October we will once again have a significant financial surplus”

The Minister of Economy, Luis Caputoassured this Tuesday that “you can grow with stocks”just as happened in Chile between 1984 and 1991, during the presidencies of the dictator Augusto Pinochet and Patricio Aylwin. In that sense, he predicted that Argentina will grow in 2025 “5% or more, even with stocks.” Even so, he stated that “next year at some point he will get out of the trap”but avoided specifying dates.

“It is not true that with stocks you cannot grow. Argentina, next year, will be growing at 5% or more, even with stocks”the head of the Treasury Palace announced before economists and businessmen at a conference organized by the Latin American Economic Research Foundation (FIEL).

For Caputo, the exit from the stocks “is a matter of conditions and not time”, since Argentina has to gain competitiveness by “lowering taxes” and not devaluing. “Over time, these conditions will continue to improve. We want to do it when we are 100% sure that it will not generate any problems in the economy,” he mentioned.

“Argentina has never been in a better time to get out of the trap”held. Although, by 2024 gross domestic product will fall between 2% and 3% in 2024, butAccording to the official, as a consequence of “statistical carryover”.

“We are going to continue improving the macro; we are going to continue deregulating the micro; and we are going to continue respecting private property. We are already lowering the most distorting of taxes, which is inflation,” he added.

Luis Caputo announced that in October it closed with a “significant” financial surplus.

Caputo said that from the beginning of his mandate he thought “go to fiscal balance in year one” because there was no “credibility” or room for the market “keep believing promises”. In that sense, he announced that in October it closed with a financial surplus “important”.

“Something was done that we all thought was practically impossible and a great myth was debunked“Caputo pointed out to businessmen and economists.

“That, in some way, made us recover part of the credibility lost for so many decades and that makes things much more possible today. Eleven months after that talk, I can tell you that in October we will once again be in a financial surplus“revealed the head of the Treasury Palacewhich emphasized that it would be “important“.

Along these lines, he pointed out against those who said that the fiscal balance January was the result of “sitting in the box”, not paying CAMMESA (Administrative Company of the Wholesale Electricity Market) and against those who said that the surplus would fall with the fall of the COUNTRY tax. “It’s been 10 months and almost no one doubts the fiscal commitment that this Government has,” he highlighted.

“It has a lot to do with the President because Javier Milei made the fiscal anchor a level of consciousness in the people, in politics and in the officials themselves, which made our task easy. The events we saw this last month demonstrate this, such as the Budget 2025, which is a paradigmatic change, which says that expenses will have to be adapted to income, but like in our homes we won’t be able to spend more than what we collect,” he reflected.

Luis Caputo pointed out against the retirement reform and the university financing law

In line with the defense of fiscal balance, the official highlighted that it took the president “a minute and a half to veto the two laws that the opposition tried to pass,” in reference to the retirement reformwhich returned the loss of purchasing power that the assets of the elderly had had in the connection with the formula that the Government designated through a DNU; and the university financing lawwhich promoted the inflation update of the items allocated to higher education institutions that depend on the Nation.

“It took him a minute and a half to veto each of the two laws that the opposition tried to pass, touching on very sensitive issues, but with the obvious objective of hurting this fiscal anchor,” defended the head of the Treasury Palace. In that sense, he acknowledged that it brought “a cost in terms of image,” but he paraphrased the president and said that “the image is there to be invested – as the president says – and he came here to do things well, not so that his image in month after month is obsessing him.

Luis Caputo defended the negative rate policy

The official explained that upon arrival, the Central Bank had three monetary bases in paid liabilitiestherefore, he could not follow the advice of setting a positive real rate, as everyone pointed out, because “we would have had to print one more monetary base only in December”, another in January and so on.

“That would have been dramatic.”he catapulted. The thing is, as Caputo explains, this scenario would have triggered “hyperinflation” or “very high inflation.”

“As time goes by, the more we leave behind the negative effects of the previous government’s horrible monetary policy, and the more our monetary policy prevails,” he added.

Regarding inflation, he highlighted that it converged to “crawling-peg” and that the gap between financial and official dollars is currently at historic lows for the last five years. “The economy is recovering, there has never been a better time than this,” he emphasized.