Martina Jaureguy 
President Javier Milei’s government reduced the number of ministries and secretariats by 50% and 49%, respectively, to cut public spending, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said in a press conference on Tuesday morning. Echoing Milei, he explained that “there’s no money.”
“The situation is critical,” Adorni said, citing a report by the Argentine Catholic University that concluded that poverty in Argentina reached 45% in the third quarter of 2023.
“There’s no money, and that has to be reflected in concrete measures like the [presidential decree that modifies the number of] ministries and the reduction of state structure,” Adorni said. On Monday, he announced that the new administration would be revising all state employees contracts to “detect irregularities.” Now, he said this process has already begun.
In addition, undersecretariats will be reduced by 23% and public officials by 34%.
According to newly appointed Unión por la Patria national deputy Julia Strada, the elimination of the nine ministries, 50 secretariats, and 42 undersecretariats Adorni announced means a reduction of AR$3.2 billion in public expenditure. “This is equivalent to 0.00142% of the [Argentine] GDP,” wrote Strada, who was a Banco Nación director from 2021 until Sunday.
Adorni said that, in the short term, the new administration “will do the impossible to stop a catastrophe from happening” and to comply with what Milei promised during his presidential campaign.
“We are in the middle of one of the largest economic crises in Argentine history,” the spokesman said. “We are also heading towards hyperinflation, and we want to stop that from happening.”
Adorni announced that any public official or state employee who doesn’t want to provide the required information during the contract revision process will be sanctioned accordingly, and that state advertising will be suspended for a year.
On the other hand, the spokesman revealed that Economy Minister Luis Caputo will not offer a live press conference to announce his first economic measures. Instead, he will record a message that will be streamed at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
The measures package has the objective of “attacking the economic emergency” in Argentina “to stop a larger catastrophe from happening,” Adorni commented. “We understand the situation is bad, and we are very conscious that it could be considerably worse.”
Caputo’s announcements will have a fiscal and monetary axis aimed at “deactivating the bombs this government has received,” Adorni added.
