The president-elect spoke on his return to the country after his tour to the United States a few days after taking office. In statements to different media, he explained why he considers the chosen economy minister “valuable.”
Javier Milei confirmed to Luis Caputo as the one in charge of occupying a “hot seat” such as the Ministry of Economy. When he expressed the reasons why he called him, he mentioned him as one of the professionals he considers “valuable” from Together for Change.
“We consider them valuable, they are professionals who worked in Together for Change. I have to make up the best team to avoid a economic catastrophe which is the inflation that the government is leaving us. Mauricio Macri He doesn’t define things but he is someone I talk to regularly. Many of the technical tables of Together for Change, some are colleagues and others are also friends. There is a certain affinity. It’s not for nothing that the programs had about 90% of the things in common and Not for nothing did the support also work“, he expressed in dialogue with Rivadavia.
“To avoid hyperinflation it is key disassemble the Leliqs ball (Liquidity Letters, debt of the Central Bank with the banking system, for which it pays an effective interest rate currently of 253% per year), also allows opening the stocks,” Milei stated, the same message that Caputo transmitted to them last Friday to the top executives of the main banks in Argentina. For that task, Milei said, “I need someone who has an expert financial wrist; “There is no greater financial expert in Argentina than Luis Caputo.”
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Regarding Caputo’s meeting with IMF officials, Milei expressed: “we are making strong progress. The meeting with the Treasury and the Fund was led by the Chief of Staff, Nicolás Posse, and Luis Caputo. I have the report of the meeting with the Treasury, the results of which were excellent. They perfectly understand the problems of Argentina, are very involved with what the Leliqs have to do with. In that sense, the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, was able to discuss these topics in depth. There was an excellent reception and they perfectly understand the challenge of what we are facing. That was very good“said the president-elect in an interview with Radio Miter.
Luis Caputo’s history
In 2015 he took over as Secretary of Finance and two years later he was appointed minister of the area. In the midst of the 2018 financial crisis, he arrived at the BCRA to replace Federico Sturzenegger.
He lasted a little over three months at the monetary authority, and was then replaced by Guido Sandleris. During his administration he was in charge of the negotiation with the vulture funds, where Argentina agreed to pay US$9,352 million to the main creditors. The complete issue was for US$16,000 million and was the first of the Cambiemos administration. Another milestone was the remembered 100-year dollar bond, with an interest coupon of 7.125%.
His departure from the BCRA was marked by a confrontation with the IMF officials headed by the then head of the Western Department of the organization, Alexander Werner. The focus of the problem was the magnitude of the intervention in the exchange market by the monetary authority during the exchange runs of that time. A priori, the Fund did not want the Government to use the resources it lent to control the dollar and the economic team maintained that it should limit the volatility of the official dollar in a context of mistrust.
In August of last year, in a message addressed to Werner, Caputo stated through his X account (former Twitter) that he had not participated in the negotiation of the agreement. standby of 2018 and that he was against it. “The market reaction was what I anticipated: the opposite of what you and your IMF colleagues expected.”
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Telam Agency
Dollarization: what Luis Caputo thinks
In a report from his consulting firm Anker last week, Caputo was specific about what he thinks about the dollarization.
“We believe there will be a ordered roadmap and not disruptive to market dynamics, and we rule out a scenario of dollarization at any price,” the report reads.
“The first reaction of local bonds and stocks abroad (to the election result) was highly positive, which confirms the high degree of pessimism that reigned in the market and the hope for lasting change. After the initial movement, the dynamics of the quotes will depend on the interaction between the transition managementthe signals that the president-elect offers about his economic program and the chances of success that the market assigns to it,” stated the Anker experts.
Source: Ambito
