The Argentine economy shrunk by 1.8% during President Javier Milei’s first full year in office in 2024, with construction and manufacturing as the most affected sectors.

The information was revealed by the Monthly Estimator of Economic Activity (EMAE, by its Spanish initials), an economic survey released on Tuesday that serves as an estimate for the country’s GDP. 

While the drop was expected, the figure is smaller than the government estimated. In his 2025 budget bill — which was ultimately not addressed by Congress — Milei had projected a  3.8% GDP drop for the year.

EcoGo consultant agency Alan Versalli told Herald sister publication Ámbito that these numbers mean that “economy levels are back to the same numbers it had in August 2023,” before the primary elections in which Milei surprisingly came first.

In August 2023, then Economy Minister and presidential candidate Sergio Massa applied a 22% devaluation on the Argentine peso. Following Milei’s win in November, Economy Minister Luis Caputo ordered a record 54% devaluation. Inflation in December 2023 was 25.5% amid a chaotic economic situation.

After the hard blow suffered in December 2023, the economy seems to be slowly recovering: activity registered a 5.5% Y-o-Y increase in December 2024, and grew by 0.5% compared to November, its eighth consecutive monthly increase.

Nine of the 15 sectors measured by the EMAE registered interannual activity increases, such as finance intermediation (+18%) and retail (+7.4%). However, fishing plunged by 25%, while construction did so by 7,2%.

Minister Caputo celebrated the EMAE results in an X post, highlighting the +0.5% monthly increase and the +5.5% interannual variation. However, he wrongly said “economy grew by 5.5% in 2024” — that number only compares December 2023 to December 2024 and does not contemplate the accumulated numbers throughout the year. He added that public spending was cut by 27% last year.