The president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, announced Monday that he will cut by half the number of ministries and create a tax on exports, reports Agência Brasil. The aim of the measures is to reduce the country’s fiscal deficit to zero by 2019. With this proposal, Finance Minister Nicolas Dujovne travels to Washington to start renegotiating on Tuesday (04) the agreement he signed with the Fund International Monetary Fund (IMF) in June and that – in the face of the new currency crisis – needs to be revised.
Macri made the national television talk before the opening of financial markets and after a week of high volatility, where the peso lost 25% of its value against the US dollar. He said that “the last five months were the hardest” of his life since 1991 (when he was abducted in exchange for ransom), but that the country lives an “emergency” and the only alternative is adjustment. “We are going to ask for a bigger contribution to those who have more capacity – those who export in Argentina,” he said.
With the new measures, exporters of primary products (including grains and minerals) will pay the government four pesos for each dollar. The exporters of the other products will pay a lower rate of three pesos for each dollar obtained.
This text was translated by machine from Brazilian Portuguese.