In a bid to consolidate Argentina’s fiscal surplus and reinforce the Central Bank’s international reserves, President Javier Milei’s government is moving forward with an ambitious and longstanding privatisation plan.
The government’s strategy is to generate income in dollars from the sale or concession of state-run companies. This is crucial for the government, given the accumulation of foreign currency is still one of the main concerns facing its economic programme.
However, there is a new development to discussions: several of the companies targeted for state sell-offs managed to run a surplus in 2025. According to information from the annual balance sheet of Argentina’s Economy Ministry on the income and expenses of state-run companies, four of the six key firms the government has eyed for selling closed out the year in the black, raising doubts about timing.
Generally speaking, Argentina’s state-run companies combined closed out 2025 with a financial surplus of 903 billion pesos (around US$655 million). Even so, this was a 19.1-percent drop from 2024, when the surplus was recorded at 1.1 trillion pesos.
Another way of measuring is through operating profit or loss, excluding the financial component of accounts. Following this criteria, the sector had an operating deficit of 1.3 trillion pesos (US$944 million).
The numbers in the red were explained chiefly by imbalances at the state-owned gas importer ENARSA and the state railway services, more than one trillion pesos in each case. On the other hand, the AySA waterworks, state airline Aerolíneas Argentinas and Correo Argentino post office recorded an operating surplus.
The official privatisation plan covers such key sectors as energy, transport and infrastructure. The main companies included are Energía Argentina (ENARSA), Intercargo, Corredores Viales, Belgrano Cargas y Logística and AySA.
In several cases, the government has already started bidding or concession processes, while in others it is moving forward with prior restructuring to make them more appealing to private sector buyers.
Analysing the situation on a company-by-company basis, it should be noted that much of the financial surplus as a whole is explained by ENARSA, the company in charge of managing the energy infrastructure. It closed last year with a surplus of 324 billion pesos. At any rate, that was 31.8 percent lower than in 2024.
AySA’s operating profit was 237 billion pesos, though its financial deficit was 18 billion pesos. The explanation of this gap, according to the company, is that income from water rates – which increased by around one percent per month in 2025 – grew at a slower pace than the expenditure in works.
Another company the government wants to concession and which recorded a financial deficit in 2025 is Belgrano Cargas. The railway cargo company was in the red by 41 billion pesos, well above the nearly 6.2 billion pesos the previous year.
By contrast, other state-run companies closed the year with positive numbers, including Intercargo, Corredores Viales and Nucleoeléctrica Argentina. In all three cases, in 2025 the government has started the formal process to sell them or offer concessions. For Corredores Viales, there have even been bids opened for some stretches of national routes.
Intercargo had a financial surplus close to 30 billion pesos; Corredores Viales, of 39.6 billion pesos; and Nucleoeléctrica Argentina – the manager of Argentina' s nuclear power plants – of 90.3 billion pesos.
Despite the improvement in numbers, the government is sticking to its road map. The main objective remains to obtain dollars in the short run to strengthen reserves.
In that context, privatisations work as a tool supplementing other sources of funding, in a context where access to international credit remains limited.
In addition, the ruling party holds that the private sector can manage these assets more efficiently, reducing costs and improving service quality.
– TIMES/PERFIL
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