President Javier Milei said in an interview Monday that by 2026, Argentina will no longer have currency controls.
Milei said that Argentina’s complicated web of foreign currency controls, which have been in place since 2019 and limit access to dollars, would be eradicated by the beginning of next year at the latest.
He added that securing a new financing programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is being negotiated and could include fresh funds, could speed up the process.
"We, without the help of the fund, will lift the 'cepo' in 2026,” he said, using the word used to refer to Argentina’s byzantine system of foreign exchange controls.
“The first of January, 2026, the 'cepo' will not exist,” repeated Milei.
If there is a fresh disbursement of funds from the IMF, it could be “done faster,” the President told the LN+ news channel.
Milei’s government is seeking fresh funds to bolster Central Bank reserves and facilitate the lifting of the currency controls.
It must also finish paying back outstanding debt from its US$44-billion loan programme, agreed in 2018 by former president Mauricio Macri’s government.
“We are working on moving forward with an agreement,” said Milei. “We have to see how the programme is structured, how the funds are put in place, that will determine the exit from the cepo,’ said Milei.
Milei’s government successfully lowered inflation last year from 211.4 percent in 2023 to 117.8 percent in 2024, while recording its first fiscal surplus in more than a decade.
Economist Marina Dal Poggetto believes that Milei’s economic programme depends on the cepo and its successful removal.
“Capital controls are part of the current economic scheme. If the objective is to guarantee the continuity of the disinflation process ... the plan requires supervising both the official and the financial [exchange] markets,” Dal Poggetto said in a separate interview with LN+.
– TIMES/AFP
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