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Diario de la Pampa – Economists criticized on Friday the speech of President Mauricio Macri before the Legislative Assembly and pointed out that although there may be a better base than in 2015, the indicators are worse than those of that year.
The director of the Center of Studies of the New Economy of the University of Belgrano, Víctor Beker, said that the president “spoke very little about economics, and did well because in general, looking at the economic indicators, the economy is not better than in the 2015 “.
Speaking to NA, Beker said that “inflation is at 50%, poverty that was 27% is now close to 30% and the economy fell 2.6% last year as in previous years, so It is very difficult to find any better indicator than when this Government took office “.
He added: “It is true that there were things that had to be done, because in 2015 they left a time bomb, but the little good that was done in the first year of government, later became a series of errors, which led us to ask the IMF for help. “
“There was a heavy inheritance that had to be paid at the beginning, but then the dollar fell behind and there is a hyper-positive interest rate that affects the entire economy,” he said.
The economist said that economic activity is lower than that of 2015, and there is an idle industrial capacity of over 50%, a level that had never been reached and that is affecting the entire productive apparatus.”
For his part, the economist of Libertad y Progreso Foundation Aldo Abram said that “in economic terms, the President did not say much, and although it can be agreed that the bases are better than in 2015, it is simply because there is no stock and it left the default.”
“Unfortunately in its management, the debt was not used to solve the mother of all problems, which is the excess of public spending and to support the real economy,” he said.
Likewise, he stated that the level of spending of the Nation, provinces and municipalities “is the same as in 2015, the debt was used to sustain a useless expenditure and hardly that benefits the productive sector, the growth of wealth and employment, what is needed, “he commented in NA statements.
Abram said that “the only thing the President has said is that it will lower spending, but 80% of this year’s Budget implies an adjustment that is being paid by the people and the productive sector, but not by the State.” The economist considered that “an opportunity to solve this problem has been lost with the lowest possible social cost”.
The economist considered that “an opportunity to solve this problem has been lost with the lowest possible social cost”.
“The management of President Macri, like that of Cristina Kirchner, have been very bad for the same reason, which was to maintain an unsustainable state for the level of wealth generated by the productive system,” he said.
And he insisted: “If we continue with this strategy, with this Government or with any other that wins, we will be worse and the economy will come back to hit reality”.
Meanwhile, the former Minister of Economy Buenos Aires Silvina Batakis said that the President “the only thing he did was to try new lies, even after his Minister of Economy (Nicolás Dujovne) recognized that Argentina is in recession.”
“Macri did not propose measures to get out of this economic chaos or how this crisis is going to be reversed,” he added in a statement to NA.
He added: “It is not true that we are better than in 2015, and it is enough to see the projections that indicate that by the end of this year, the product and per capita income will be six times lower than in 2015”.
“This is aggravated by the loss of almost 200 thousand jobs, plus an indebtedness that is a historic record both in the Nation and in the province of Buenos Aires. The level of public debt is a bomb that will leave or this government to the next administration of presidential, “he said.
“Before the Legislative Assembly of the previous year, he said that inflation would fall and last year we had the highest increase of the last 27 years, it is the highest in the world and we will leave a price increase of 150 in four years”, he stressed.
Batakis predicted that “the situation will not change, because they will continue applying the same policies, and the economic situation has nothing to do with external crises, because there were no external shocks like those of 2008 and 2009, and the region, Europe and the United States, they have grown in the last four years. “
