MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Habitat Minister's resignation announced

Fernández has a busy international agenda for this week

Argentine President Alberto Fernández Sunday confirmed the departure of Jorge Ferraresi as Minister of Territorial Development and Habitat. He will be replaced by Deputy Minister Santiago Maggiotti.

Ferraresi will return to his position as Mayor of Avellaneda, as various other ministers did before him - they each returned to the municipalities they had left on unpaid leave. Cabinet Chief Juan Manzur also announced last week that he would reclaim his job as Governor of Tucumán once a suitable replacement has been found for him.

President Fernández thanked Ferraresi for his work and for his “political commitment in the very difficult time” the government had gone through.

“I am deeply and sincerely grateful for the work carried out by Jorge Ferraresi and I value his political commitment in the very difficult time in which we had to govern. His effort was essential to advance in the structural transformation of our Argentina”, said Fernández while posting pictures of him with Ferraresi and Maggiotti, with whom he said he had discussed “the development of housing and habitat policies that are providing a response to hundreds of thousands of families all over the country.”

President Fernández will participate this week in ECLAC and CELAC meetings to be held in Buenos Aires, before he joins the Paris Forum for Peace in November and the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

President is to open the 39th session of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Monday. It is the most important biennial meeting of this regional organization of the United Nations (UN), which span through Wednesday.

The meeting will bring together representatives of the 46 member states and 14 associate members of ECLAC, as well as researchers, international officials, representatives of civil society, and various scholars.

Argentina will host the ECLAC meeting for the first time since 1963. The event will focus on inflation, multilateralism, and regional recovery in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic in a context of both domestic and external restrictions, it was reported.

Argentina's Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero said that applying high-interest rates to lower inflation “must go hand in hand with policies that expand the supply, industrial and concrete, and cluster enclave development policies, and not only of macro order, but that it has to do with promoting sectors, incorporating technologies, strategic minerals, and promoting knowledge-based services.”

ECLAC recently foresaw a 3.9 % growth for the Argentine economy in 2022 and 1 % for 2023, while projecting a regional expansion of 3.2 % for this year and 1.4 percent for next year.

On Thursday, Fernández, currently the pro tempore president of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), is scheduled to attend the meeting of foreign ministers of that bloc and the European Union (EU), also in Buenos Aires.