Guillermo Franco: “Poverty is going to decrease because inflation has fallen and there is a recovery in salaries”

The official attributed the number of poor, which jumped from 40.1% in the second half of 2023 to 52.9% in the first half of 2024to the “inflationary lack of control that is what Argentina has experienced in recent years“and stressed that “poverty is not the responsibility of the Government but of those who preceded us.”

“We are trying to solve it“said Francos in dialogue with C5N. In that sense, he maintained that Javier Milei’s administration is carrying out the necessary policies to reverse this situation and highlighted the drop in the inflation number.

“Poverty was higher in the first quarter of the year and went down in the second and is going to go down in the third because Inflation has fallen and there is a recovery in real wages“he emphasized.

Although he recognized that the Government’s economic measures had an impact on the growth of poverty, he warned that if they had not been taken The figure would have been even higher.

“Zero deficit was obtained immediately and that caused inflation to drop abruptly. Surely we would have been closer to 90% poverty if we had had the inflation that was projected“, held.

Poverty in Argentina reached 52.9%, the highest figure in 20 years

According to the latest INDEC report, poverty in Argentina reached 52.9% in the first half of 2024 and jumped 12.8 percentage points compared to the last measurement. This is the highest figure in 20 years. At the same time, destitution escalated from 9.3% to 18.1%.

Extrapolated to the total population, this implies that some 24.8 million Argentines are poor, while some 8.5 million are in a situation of destitution.

He 42.5% of households are in povertyabout 4,319,760, where 52.9% of the people live. Within this set, there is a 13.6% of households below the indigence line (LI), some 1,378,142, which includes 18.1% of people.