Argentina’s president Javier Milei has said he is not ready to lift the country’s currency controls, arguing that a fixed date for scrapping the measure is incompatible with his “regime of freedom”.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the libertarian economist argued that, for the controls to be scrapped, the country’s rampant inflation had to fall further, among other economic conditions.
“We are not communists, we are libertarians,” Milei told the FT. “There is a philosophical question behind this, which is that I cannot set dates because I don’t think like a central planner. We think in terms of a regime of freedom.”
The controls, imposed by a previous government in 2019 amid an economic crisis, fix the peso at an official rate and limit individual and company purchases of foreign currency, creating a black market for the US currency and deterring foreign investment.
Milei, who devalued the official rate by more than 50 per cent on taking office in December last year, had previously said he hoped to scrap the controls in mid-2024.