BUENOS AIRES: Argentina’s monthly inflation rate fell to 2.7 percent in October, its lowest level in three years, the national statistics agency said Tuesday, a development welcomed by cost-cutting President Javier Milei. Annual inflation, however, remains among the highest in the world, at 193 percent in October, figures from the Indec statistics agency showed. The government of self-described “anarcho-capitalist” President Javier Milei has applied a drastic austerity program aimed at erasing the budget deficit and taming the high inflation that has plagued Argentina for years.

In December, when he took office, monthly inflation leapt by 25.5 percent after he devalued the peso by more than 50 percent. It has since been on a downward trajectory, coming in at under five percent each month since May. “We are decreasing the tax that creates the most distortion: inflation,” Economy Minister Luis Caputo told a meeting at the Foundation for Latin American Economic Research. Salaries continue to rise more slowly than inflation—increasing 181.9 percent over the past 12 months, when prices rose by 209 percent, according to Indec.

Milei, who wielded a chainsaw on the campaign trail last year as a symbol of his plan to slash public spending, has cut energy and transport subsidies and thousands of public sector jobs.

His policies have produced Argentina’s first budget surplus in 15 years but have also been blamed for plunging the country into a deep recession and driving the proportion of Argentines living in poverty up 11 points to 52.9 percent in the first half of 2024. Addressing a meeting of entrepreneurs last week Milei pointed to a slight increase in industrial output and construction as signs the economy had turned a corner. “We are emerging from the desert, the country is starting to grow again,” he said. — AFP