Stories that caught our eye: September 20 to 27

A MAJORITY NOW POOR

More than half the population are now living below the poverty line, after INDEC statistics bureau set the percentage at 52.9 percent on Thursday afternoon, while 18.1 percent are destitute. The figure represents a double-digit surge from the end of last year when poverty was estimated at 41.7 percent while it stood at 40.1 percent in mid-2023.

MILEI BITES BIG APPLE

Placing Argentina “in the vanguard of the defence of liberty,” President Javier Milei lashed out at his hosts when addressing the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York last Tuesday, accusing the UN of drifting away from international peacekeeping to imposing a “collectivist” Pact for the Future and Agenda 2030 addressing such challenges as gender equality, sustainable development and climate change. While supporting Western values in general and the United States and Israel in particular, Milei was lining up with Russia, Nicaragua, North Korea, Iran and Turkey among others in objecting to a 56-point Pact for the Future signed by 143 of the 193 UN members but not Argentina among just seven cases of outright rejection. His stance was criticised across most of the political spectrum for gratuitously isolating Argentina and deterring the investors whom Milei had wooed the previous day when he rang the bell at Wall Street, pledging “zero deficit.” Milei told the operators that cepo currency controls would be lifted once there was “zero inflation under the macro- economic programme (i.e. after subtracting 2.5 percent for global inflation and crawling peg devaluation),” also boasting of wholesale inflation being down to 2.1 percent and “four months without pickets.” He also held his third meeting with tycoon Elon Musk, who assured the libertarian leader: “My companies are looking for ways of investing in Argentina” without offering further details.

FORADORI/DUNCAN REVISITED?

Meeting around the annual General Assembly of the United Nations in New York last Tuesday, Foreign Minister Diana Mondino and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy agreed to resume weekly flights from Sao Paulo to the Malvinas islands with a monthly stopover in Córdoba, as well as to organise a humanitarian flight to the Islands for the families of the 1982 war dead in conjunction with the Red Cross before the year is out so that they may visit the tombs of the soldiers resting there. The two ministers also expressed interest in fisheries conservation under the “sovereignty safeguard formula.” This agreement virtually resurrects the Foradori-Duncan understanding of 2018, as Mondino’s predecesor Santiago Cafiero (who nixed it in March, 2023) was quick to point out.

MORE OPEN SKIES

The government has cleared airlines to operate with foreign crews and aircraft via Decree 844/2024 published in the Official Gazette last Monday. The move, which comes in a context of airport strikes, aims at encouraging investment in Argentina and favouring federal connectivity, “promoting a competitive and flexible market so that more people use air transport.” On the same day a wheel came off a Boeing 737 as it landed after flying in from Ushuaia. In midweek Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos met up with deputies to speed up passage of PRO deputy Hernán Lombardi’s bill to reprivatise Aerolíneas Argentinas, which the government hopes can gain lower house approval by next Wednesday. On Friday, President Milei issued a decree clearing the way for privatisation.

ECONOMIC UPTICK

Economic activity last July was 1.7 percent up on the previous month although 1.3 percent down on the same month last year, the INDEC national statistics bureau reported on Thursday. But the economy remains on course for negative growth of 3.1 percent, less than the 3.8 percent estimated by the 2025 Budget. The growth was mostly due to a surge of 23.6 percent from the agricultural sector due to a favourable comparison with last year’s drought. But construction was 14.8 percent and manufacturing industry 5.6 percent.

 CONSUMER MARKETS STAY DOWN

Two private studies show mass consumption to have fallen in August from both last year and the previous month – by 13.7 percent and 4.6 percent respectively according to the Focus Market consultancy firm and by 7.8 and 1.8 percent respectively, according to the Chamber of Commerce (CAC). Focus Market director Damián Di Pace pointed out that August last year was the month of the PASO primary when “the Argentine economy was on steroids” with frenzied electioneering.

ANOTHER MONTH FOR WHITEWASH

The government has extended the deadline for entering its tax amnesty due to expire next Monday until the end of October. The corresponding bank deposits made next month may be withdrawn as from the start of November.

ROSATTI RE-ELECTED

Horacio Rosatti and Carlos Rosencrantz were re-elected chief justice and deputy chief justice of the Supreme Court last Tuesday on the nomination of outgoing justice Juan Carlos Maqueda with the other justice Ricardo Lorenzetti abstaining. Since Supreme Court rulings must have an absolute majority of its normal total of five justices, this means that once Maqueda departs at the end of the year, all decisions will need to be unanimous unless the controversial nominations of Ariel Lijo and Manuel García-Mansilla are unblocked in the Senate by then.

CARACAS WANTS MILEI

Venezuela’s highest court on Monday approved a warrant for the arrest of President Javier Milei over the “theft” of a Venezuelan plane seized in Buenos Aires in mid-2022 for alleged sanctions violations but it is only symbolic as Milei is unlikely to set foot in this country, where the warrant applies. The move can be seen as tit-for-tit retaliation for legal action with Argentina’s Federal Appeals Court on the same day ordering federal judge Sebastián Ramos to request the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for human rights violations, which Ramos proceeded to do on Wednesday. An Argentine judge had granted a request for the United States to seize the plane on the grounds that laws were broken when Iran sold it to Venezuela (both countries under US sanctions). The 19-member crew was composed of Venezuelans and Iranians -- one of whom was suspected of links to the Al Quds Force, a group of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards classified as a terrorist organization by the United States. All were initially detained but later allowed to leave.

TOP COP FROM 2001 GOES TO JAIL

Rubén Santos, Federal Police chief during the 1999-2001 Fernando de la Rúa presidency, turned himself in on Monday to start serving a 42-month prison sentence for the brutal repression of the protests in late 2001 after the Supreme Court upheld his conviction. Santos was in Spain when he heard of the adverse Supreme Court ruling, immediately returning home to present himself to Comodoro Py federal courthouse. Enrique Mathov, the Security secretary in 2001 who was covered by the same ruling, had already done so on September 19 and is now lodged in an Ezeiza prison cell from where he is requesting house arrest on the grounds of being over 70 years of age. Five people died and dozens were injured when police confronted the Plaza de Mayo protests preceding the resignation of late ex-president De la Rúa, himself acquitted in the case.

CÓRDOBA ABLAZE

Hours after his return from New York on Wednesday President Javier Milei flew to Córdoba, joining its Governor Martín Llaryora to monitor the situation there with 43,000 hectares of woodland ablaze for a total of over 70,000 so far this year. Milei was accompanied by presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei, Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos and ministers Patricia Bullrich (Security) and Luis Petri (Defence).