President Javier Milei says Argentina isn’t ready to lift its strict currency controls and that there is no set date for their removal.
The head of state made the remarks during an interview with the Financial Times. He said imposing a schedule would be to act as a “central planner,” which goes against his ideology.
“We are not communists, we are libertarians,” Milei told the FT. “There is a philosophical question behind this, which is that I cannot set dates because I don’t think like a central planner. We think in terms of a regime of freedom.”
Milei, 53, indicated that inflation would have to fall and other economic indicators would have to improve first.
He also made it clear that the lifting to foreign exchange controls – known locally as the ‘cepo’ – were not contingent on negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with which Argentina has a US$44-billion loan programme.
“We’ve already started lifting some of the regulations within the controls, and we’re doing it on our own,” said Milei, suggesting that his administration is progressing towards a greater liberalisation on its own terms.
“If someone comes and gives us a lot of cash, well then yes, we’ll open [the controls] tomorrow. But we are working as if that isn’t going to happen . . . it’s as if we were extremely risk-averse,” he added.
Economy Minister Luis Caputo, who was interviewed alongside Milei, also questioned the urgency of scrapping the restrictions, saying that while he did not want “to underestimate people looking at currency controls . . . it almost seems childish to focus on whether [they] end in two months, three, five or eight. That doesn’t matter.”
Caputo claimed that when he meets investors, “nobody asks about currency controls.”
The minister will travel to Washington to take part in the annual autumn meeting of the northern hemisphere of the IMF and the World Bank, where he will try to make headway in the preparation of a new financial programme for Argentina.
– TIMES/NA
