Martín Guzmán: "Javier Milei's economic plan failed and the IMF had to bail him out."

Former Economy Minister Martín Guzmán harshly criticized President Javier Milei 's program, stating that "the economic plan failed and had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund ( IMF ) ." During an interview on the streaming channel Blender , he analyzed the impact of the government's decisions, the lack of concrete results, and the cost of the new debt.

“The economic model the government was proposing is over . It couldn't sustain the policies it had been implementing. It ran out of dollars, there was a currency run , and if the IMF hadn't provided the dollars—which all Argentines will have to pay —the run would have been even stronger and inflation higher ,” Guzmán said.

He added that "debt isn't free money. What the Fund did was sweep certain serious problems under the rug . And we're going to pay dearly for that."

Amid criticism, Martín Guzmán acknowledged a success of Javier Milei 's administration: the Central Bank's interest rate cuts . "There's one issue the government handled very well: the reduction in BCRA interest rates . It did what I think was the right thing to do," he said.

As he explained, this was a measure planned for in the agreement with the IMF in 2022, but it was never implemented. "The interest rate had to be lowered , not raised. At the time, it was raised, now the government has lowered it, and that was what had to be done."

He criticized the previous system based on LELICs , explaining: "People's deposits, what you had on a fixed-term deposit, the bank would push a button and that would become debt of the Central Bank. The BCRA paid a higher rate than the banks to its clients . That's how financial intermediation disappeared."

Although he acknowledged that the change drew criticism for transferring debt to the Treasury, he maintained: " That was the right thing to do . But unfortunately, it won't be enough to address all the structural imbalances that have arisen."

Martín Guzmán denounced that the current economic system has fostered speculation . "There are people who have lined their pockets , many of whom I know, while someone who works in a meatpacking plant earns 500 thousand pesos and it's not enough for anything," he said.

“Workers go out and do whatever they can—Uber, Rappi, whatever—and don't see any improvement compared to what they expected, nor the illusion sold to them by the Milei administration, that adjusting the caste would solve the problems of the Argentine people. That didn't happen , and there are the results,” he concluded.