Lacunza maintained that if Milei wants to “avoid devaluation,” it should not “generate a problem” because, to maintain a low inflation number, it keeps the exchange rate low and “anchors it at the cost of delaying it.”
Former Minister of Economy Hernán Lacunza
40th IAEF Congress
The former Minister of Economy Hernan Lacunza He asserted that the Government “has power in the street” but not “in Congress or in the governors”, so it needs “a positive and robust image” because if the inflation does not go down, “he fears losing popular support.”
Likewise, the former official stated that “if there was balance,” the Government would remove the stocks on the dollar “and there would be no more demand than supply.” For Lacunza, maintaining the exchange rate and the stocks “is a contradiction.”
In statements to Radio Rivadavia, the former head of the Treasury Palace highlighted that, possibly, this management “feels comfortable in a pseudo nominal stability” of the exchange rate, without investment, but also “without growth or employment.”
“The Government has in mind a smaller State, with fewer taxes, more open, less regulated and with a low dollar. Conceptually that is true, but it does not happen in three months and, along the way, the exchange rate balances “It is not the country that the Minister of Economy (Luis Caputo) and the President (Javier Milei) dream of, but that of the union leaders, the senators and the governors. The street is the country that we are,” he stated. .
On the other hand, he assured that when “exchange policies are forced” “unemployment and recession” appear and the situation ends “in an adjustment the hard way.”
“What worries me most is that (Milei) is locking himself in an alley where, as long as they throw dollars at him through the window, he thinks that his thesis is confirmed. The problem is that they are going to throw less and less at him, he is going to start to rise the gap and then we all know that there is a small door, which is traumatic, and ends in a disorderly exit. It would be an unnecessary risk to fall into that ambush.”he remarked.
Finally, Lacunza maintained that if Milei wants to “avoid devaluation,” it should not “generate a problem” because, to maintain a low inflation number, it keeps the exchange rate low and “anchors it at the cost of delaying it.”
“If the exchange rate were in balance, there would be no discussion. Anyone could say anything and the Government, in silence, would have lifted the stocks. If not, look to see what happens in reality, in production and in the market “he concluded.
Source: Ambito
