Argentina will be “worse than before” in the coming months, but reducing the fiscal deficit is the only recipe to “avoid catastrophe,” the new Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, announced this Monday in a package of measures with little flavor.

“We are facing the worst inheritance in our history, repressed prices and debts of more than 400,000 million dollars. If we continue as we are we will inevitably lead to hyperinflation. We can reach levels of 15,000 percent annually, with milk going from 400 pesos per liter to 60,000 pesos in one year.. Our mission is to avoid this catastrophe,” Caputo said in a message that, without explanation, was delayed more than two hours from the originally scheduled time.

Caputo, who was minister and president of the Central Bank briefly during the administration of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), was chosen by the ultraliberal Javier Milei for the announcement of an economic plan that ultimately was not such.

If the previous president, the Peronist Alberto Fernández, boasted of not believing in economic plans, in his first steps as president, Milei did not offer epic or groundbreaking decisions, but rather a package of financial measures. The obsession: a “fiscal anchor” to avoid the third hyperinflation in less than 35 years in Argentina.

“This is an emergency package whose purpose is to neutralize the crisis and stabilize economic variables,” said the minister, whose expertise is in Finance, and not in the real economy.

Among the announcements is the devaluation of the peso in the official market: one dollar, which until Tuesday cost 400 pesos, will be worth 800. What is not clear is the final value, since the use of foreign currency is burdened with multiple taxes in the third largest economy in Latin America.

“The genesis of our problem has always been fiscal. Those that appear as problems are actually the consequence of how this deficit has been financed, which is when more is spent than what is collected,” added Caputo, in a speech that tried to be didactic, but only half succeeded..

“If there is an overabundance of oranges, the price of oranges falls,” he said to exemplify what happens from the uncontrolled issuance of pesos that occurred during Fernández's four-year term.

“It is the first time in more than a hundred years that a candidate explains this, that people understand it and that people vote for him very largely.. We are facing a historic opportunity, society understood that there is no more money, that we cannot spend more than what we collect,” insisted Caputo, who when speaking of “the people” paradoxically showed a distance from the citizens who were intended zoom in.