MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Former minister criticizes Argentine economy management and warns on inflation

Alberto Fernandez, former cabinet chief of Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez

Argentina’s former cabinet chief Alberto Fernandez warned that the government is “not looking at the economy as it should” and is risking “all the good things that have been done so far”. He was also very critical of Economy minister Amado Boudou.

“I believe that the big concern of this government should be how the economy is doing; we are not looking at the economy as we should. We have a very serious problem with inflation which we are not addressing and puts at risk the whole project”, said Fernandez.

The former cabinet chief of President Nestor Kirchner and during the first 18 months of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner analyzed the situation which he described as “extremely serious” with a trade surplus threatened by a notorious loss of competitiveness.

“Argentina’s competitiveness to export has fallen because we have an anchored US dollar and a significant inflation, that is an inflation in US dollars, something which we should be addressing”, added the former minister.

Minister Boudou has done nothing “to avoid in the last four years 60 billion US dollars from leaving the country while we are all suffering a process of climbing prices and he insists the economy has no problems”

“The only solution he has come up with is to chase those who buy dollars which then forces the creation of a black market that exists, and to face a serious trade misbalance with Brazil the only thing he can think of is cutting imports. This is extremely serious”, warned Fernandez.

However he said there was nothing personal with Boudou, “whom I don’t know” because the minister at the time held a very low post in the Social Security Department, “my differences are political”.

Fernandez claimed that many of his public statements are now seen by members of government as coming from the opposition, but “I would never be on the other side” opposite to President Cristina Fernandez because he feels he belongs “to this political project”.

”There will always be some Jacobins who want to accuse me of terrible things but I will always stand by my ideas”, he added and when asked if the was referring to ‘La Campora’ group, Fernandez denied point blank and said that this group of young militants were taught “to fall in love with politics by the strength of Nestor and Cristina”.

”I mean those Jacobins who like to make fancy speeches trying to reaffirm their loyalty but Nestor nor Cristina never fell for that”, he added.

Fernandez later defined the first four years of Nestor Kirchner as the best for Argentina since the return of democracy in 1983, but he also pointed out to two major political errors during Cristina Fernandez government: the farmers’ conflict and the Media Bill.

“With the camp we need to review the whole situation: we thought we were in conflict with the big landowners, but no we were involved in a fight with the small farmers, great mistake” and the Media Bill is “not good” because they don’t have that influence and we tried to blame them for mistakes that were really political blunders from the government”.