Infrastructure Minister Guillermo Ferraro said on Saturday that the government aims at privatizing the railway companies and, thus, “withdrawing the state from the economy.”

“Our orientation, the vector with which we work, is that whatever the private sector can do, let it,” said Ferraro this morning in an interview with Radio Mitre. “Look at the state, a monster that grows by itself,” he added.

Ferraro’s comments follow statements made on Thursday by Economy Minister Luis Caputo, who said that dollarization and the closing of the Central Bank are still key goals of the national government.

Even before Javier Milei took office, some consulting firms had cast doubts on whether he would follow through with his plan to dollarize the economy and shut down the Central Bank, as he promised during the campaign. A report by the 1816 consulting firm even raised the question if Caputo would carry out a “stabilization plan” or “a transition towards dollarization”.

“The objective remains the same, to reach dollarization,” Caputo said of his measures, which included a 54% devaluation that hiked the official dollar exchange rate from AR$366 to AR$800, in an interview with LN+.

“It’s the president’s objective, [the message on] which he campaigned. The president does not lie, I would like to make it clear because you have to have a real contract with the people.”

On Friday, after Caputo’s remarks, bonds and stocks fell, something analysts interpreted as the result of the minister’s mixed signals towards the market.

In a seminar on Friday organized by Adcap Grupo Financiero, PxQ consulting firm director Emmanuel Álvarez Agis said that the government should abandon the idea. “I think we have to stop talking about dollarization because the market is going to start getting nervous,” he said.