For Javier Milei, fond of hyperbole, never before in history has there been such a large gap between what is happening in the Argentine economy and what is said about it in the public sphere. This Thursday, in front of the business auditorium of the Latam Economic Forum, in Buenos Aires, he reviewed a selection of auspicious numbers from his administration and, like his Minister of Economy minutes before, he predicted that this distortion will be evident in the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2027. The economy, they assure the Government, will prevail over politics and the people will give La Libertad Avanza another four years in the Casa Rosada.
“We can have a little bit of zigzag in the indicators, but the trend is clear: Argentina is moving towards a scenario of lower inflation and higher growth,” summarized the president, who was received with standing applause by around 300 businessmen and, before giving his speech, received a stone brought from Jerusalem and a blessing from the hands of a rabbi. “Argentina has been expanding at a rate of 5% annually, quintupling the rate at which we had been growing,” he specified, adding that of poverty”, two million more than what his Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, had said.
These data coexist with the feeling of people, who assure that their present does not match the successes praised by the Government. The short circuit is pointed out by journalists but also by representatives of economic orthodoxy, related to its policies, which makes it clear that the official data are averages that fail to describe an unequal and fragmented socioeconomic reality. And they live with others who have a great impact on people’s lives, such as the .
Before the president, Minister Caputo listed a long list of data as a self-confessed strategy to “fight the narrative.” Among other things, he mentioned that inflation is once again declining and announced that in May it will be lower than the last published figure, 2.6% in April. Caputo – with whom Milei has a “symbiotic relationship”, in his own words – spoke of a record of exports of goods in April, for almost 9,000 million dollars, and projected that this year they will reach 100,000 million dollars in total exports, with agribusiness contributing 17,000 million dollars in the first four months of the year.
Caputo even blushed at the praise he said he had received from the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, who congratulated him and set Argentina as an example at a G20 meeting for being the country that has best navigated the crisis. shock external generated with the war; the only one that registers a fiscal and energy surplus. He also celebrated the 16 investment projects that were closed within the framework of the (RIGI), but admitted how difficult it is to attract private capital to the country. In fact, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the country registered the lowest level of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) among the main economies of Latin America in 2025.
“Let us not let ourselves psychopathize more with what is heard and what is seen,” the minister insisted, aiming his darts at the media. Along the same lines as the Secretary of Agriculture, Sergio Iraeta, who this week was upset for not being applauded at a public event, Caputo said that the “attitudinal” is fundamental. “If people eat the story and get depressed because the newspapers say that everything is bad, one is going to withdraw, when in reality the data show that we have made a historic change and that “The direction is the right one,” he noted.
In the 2024 midterm elections, Milei , which raised eyebrows at the support it received when society was first experiencing the virulence of its anti-spending chainsaw. The Government trusts that something similar will happen in the next presidential elections. “Many expect a classic electoral year in Argentina, but let me tell you my opinion: it is going to be the opposite of what journalists say, what the market believes. It is going to be an absolutely atypical electoral year because the economy is going to be brought into politics for the first time,” Caputo concluded. For the minister, the strategy of “generating noise” to destabilize will not be effective. “With shock internal, external, internal – he said in reference to the – the economy is good,” said the minister. “People are not stupid, they realize it.”
In the front row of the auditorium was the secretary of the presidency, Karina Milei, whom the organizer of the event, financial advisor Darío Epstein, defined as an inseparable part of the president himself. “There is no Javier if there is no Karina. They are the same,” he said before introducing him. Also present was the Chief of Staff, , who the president maintains in his position despite the revelations that put him under the microscope of justice for alleged illicit enrichment.
