MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina: Digital currency bill will not wait until election day

Massa explained that the digital currency and the money laundering bills are joint part of his economic plan

Argentina's Economy Minister and presidential candidate Sergio Massa announced Monday that he would not wait for the results of the Oct. 22 polls to send to Congress the bill for the creation of the new digital currency he announced during Sunday's electoral debate. “We are going to launch the Argentine digital currency,” Massa told the C5N network.

“The digitalized economy also breaks the pockets of corruption because it is the most frank and hard limit that can be put on corruption. I will soon send the law that creates the Argentine Digital Currency to Congress because there are more than 100 countries that are already doing it,” he added.

He also explained that Norway and Sweden were known to be successful models in terms of the implementation of a digital currency. He also argued that, at a regional level, Brazil was also implementing the measure.

“With Brazil, we have a lot of bilateral trade, a lot of complementary and synergic work and we have to have a common look, and Mercosur in that sense is central,” Massa also said.

Massa hopes the bill will be passed together with the money laundering initiative which is already being handled by the Lower House. It will be “a money laundering law that will allow those who have money abroad to bring it and use it freely without new taxes,” Massa explained.

He also argued that the opposition was reluctant to vote on this issue “so that it will not be known who are the citizens who have accounts in the United States, based on an agreement sealed between that country and Argentina.” The minister also explained that his initiative is backed by an agreement with the US that grants Argentina “access to all the information of those who have accounts” there. Hence, “there are many who do not want it.”

Chaco Governor and former Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich said “Sergio was very clear on economic matters in the presidential debate.”

“It is of vital importance for our country to generate a monetary regime that provides macroeconomic stability; it is necessary to have a holistic, systemic, and integral economic plan,” he added on X (formerly Twitter). In Capitanich's view, Argentina needs “a legal and mandatory digital currency regime.”