(Buenos Aires) Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, who will hand over power to ultraliberal Javier Milei on December 10, on Sunday attributed the ruling party’s electoral defeat to inflation and questioned data indicating that more than 40% of Argentinians live in poverty.
The outgoing center-left president – who replaced Mauricio Macri (right) in power in 2019, now an ally of Mr. Milei – took stock of his four years in office in an interview with the Noticias Argentinas agency.
“We lost because it is obvious that the problem of inflation has worsened with the lack of dollars,” he said, acknowledging that he had not “found an answer to that.”
Argentina is experiencing inflation of 143% over one year, in a context of shortage of foreign exchange reserves. This situation led to significant monetary issuance to compensate for the public finance deficit, thus fueling the inflationary spiral.
Concerning poverty in the country, the outgoing president estimated that if 40% of Argentines actually lived below the poverty line as statistics indicate, “Argentina would have imploded”.
“I think poverty is poorly measured,” assured the 64-year-old leader, highlighting “37 consecutive months of job creation.”
Alberto Fernandez, who will participate on Thursday in the summit of Mercosur leaders (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) in Brazil in what will be his last international event, indicated that as a “democrat” he will attend the transfer of power with Milei.
The ultraliberal and anti-system economist largely won the second round of the presidential election on November 19, with 56% of the votes against 44% for his rival, the Minister of the Economy Sergio Massa, candidate of the government bloc.