Argentina – Economic issues remain major challenge for new gov’t: analyst

News Americas, Buenos Aires, Argentina, tues. Oct. 29, 2019: Economic issues still remain as a major challenge for the new government of Argentina, said an analyst during an exclusive interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), after the country’s former chief of the Cabinet of Ministers Alberto Fernandez was elected as the country’s new president on Sunday.

Incumbent Mauricio Macris, who was seeking to win a second term, was terminated as Fernandez secured 48 percent of the vote.

Macri won the presidency in 2015 on the promise of transforming the country and the economy, and reducing poverty. Yet, four years later, the peso has more than halved in value, inflation is amongst the highest in the world and poverty has spiked to over 35 percent.

“As we are hearing the key issue here has been the economy. When [Mauricio] Macri started his government almost four years ago now, he said to voters ‘judge me by the state of the economy once I am up to reelection’. And the reality right now is that the state of the economy of Argentina is not very good; inflation is very high, almost 60 percent, and especially starting since April 2018, the economy has experienced a large fall down, causing a hike in poverty. So, right now the big response to this issue is going back to what Argentina had before. And this is basically possible because of great political move by former president Cristina Kirchner who decided to run as vice president and give the center seat or the front seat to a more moderate candidate of Peronism,” said Mariano De Alba, an international lawyer and foreign affairs analyst.

The analyst went on to say that the economic issues are more a systemic problem and it still takes time to see whether the new government can tackle the issues.

“I think this is much more systematic and I think that’s going to take not only a lot of time but also a lot of creative thinking. I mean Peronism is going to be back on power but that doesn’t mean they have the tools to recover the economy. Let’s remember that Cristina Kirchner went out of power basically by printing a lot of money which will cause a lot of inflation if done again, and also by hiding very important economic figures. So the basis of Macri’s plan is right in theory, the big challenge is how to do it and how to keep international investors happy with investing in the country,” said the analyst. (SOURCE: CCTV)