Another about-face for Milei. Alone two months from the settlement, Javier Miley, the far-right and ultra-liberal Argentine president finds himself having to deal with the lack of a majority in parliament. After dealing with the maxi-strike called by the unions against deregulation and privatisations, after having kicked out the Minister of Infrastructure Guillermo Ferraro for alleged flirtations with the press, now the tenant of the Casa Rosada has been forced to remove the tax package from read to all, the mega-decree on deregulation initially containing 600 articles. Milei’s goal is to achieve congressional approval as early as next week, but experts expect a long and complex session. The move was announced by the Argentine Economy Minister, Luis Caputoafter frenetic negotiations with the opposition, however avoid a stalemate to Congress and try instead to speed up approval of the sheet of reforms in the Chamber of Deputies, where the path promises to be full of obstacles, in a week of high political tension.
Even though they had been the main ones workhorses from the election campaign of the party leader Freedom Advances, Milei waives all articles on exports, pensions and taxes. Moreover, the renunciation of the privatization of the company had already emerged from the new draft of the law.YPF energy company, another strong point of the new president. But if the government had not withdrawn the set of articles that specifically concern the regions’ exports, changes to the calculation of pension increases, the tax moratorium and a revision of income taxes “he would have suffered a certain defeat in Parliament. This is why he had to turn around,” a “conversational” opposition deputy explained to Ansa. “We agree on the urgency ofbudget balance – adds the source – but the mechanism to get there must be fair and reasonable, and what was foreseen by the Omnibus law was not”.
To take on the position more uncompromising on the financial package were the governors. In a conversation with the Minister of the Interior William Francothe administrators had explained on Friday morning that i withdrawals on exports they would have asphyxiated the come in generated by local economies (minerals in the north, agriculture in the centre, energy in the south) resulting in “a suicide in front of one’s electorate”. In particular, according to estimates from the Rosario Trade Exchange, the withheld provided for by the Omnibus law with the collection of the export right would have brought 8,050 million of dollars in the state coffers, or 700 million dollars more than now.
The objective of Libertà Avanza is now to present the law to the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday 30 January, for approval on the same day, and thus advance to the Senate. A scenario that puts pressure on the President of the Chamber, Martin Menem (Lla) – grandson of the former president Carlos Menem – who does not enjoy a good relationship with the tenant of the Casa Rosada, due to a management of the classroom considered “rather inexperienced“.
According to experts it will be a very tense week, because net of the tax package, the 500 articles of the Omnibus law still provide very controversial pointscome i delegated powers to the president. The question of Milei’s “superpowers” for one year (he had initially asked for two with an extension to four) creates many perplexities. Based on this mechanism, in fact, the Casa Rosada could return to to impose the tax package just collected. And it is precisely on this topic that a plan is foreseen tough battlefor a session that promises to be complicated, heated and very long.