Economy Minister Luis Caputo hinted at the government moving forward with measures to incentivize Argentines to spend the dollar bills they hide “under the mattress.” 

“We want people to be able to use their dollars without being afraid of being persecuted,” he said in an interview with streaming show La Casa on Monday. “Today, many people don’t spend them out of fear of being investigated, so they hide them away. That’s not good for anyone.”

According to Caputo, there are currently “much more dollars than pesos” in print and that, since the government decided to stop printing pesos, they need for dollars to circulate in order to create “more jobs and have better salaries.”

“We need to have more money circulating in our economy. That’s what we call remonetization,” the minister said. However, this would be done without printing pesos.

Although he refused to clarify what the measure would entail until it is officially announced, he hinted that deregulations were coming. “The idea is for you to buy whatever you want without anyone asking for explanations.”

According to Caputo, Argentines have started to take out bank loans to buy apartments or cars and that this “creates the need for there to be more printed money,” which could be in pesos or dollars. “Since we are not printing pesos, we need for dollars to circulate.” 

“What we are planning to do will make people much more likely to take their dollars out from under the mattress, from their safe-deposit box, and spend them,” the minister said.

The concept of keeping dollar bills under the mattress refers to the Argentine wariness about having dollars in savings accounts after the 2001 “corralito,” a measure carried out by then Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, who froze all bank accounts in order to stop a bank run and did not allow for dollar withdrawals, leading to extreme social tension. This event precipitated the 2001 socioeconomic crisis and resulted in the resignation of President Fernando De la Rúa. Deposits in U.S. dollars were later forcibly exchanged for pesos at a higher exchange rate, meaning many people were not able to fully recover their savings.