The former president of the Central Bank Mercedes Marcó del Pont acknowledged the excesses of the monetary policy applied during the Kirchnerist governments and timidly admitted that "they may have" exceeded the issuance of pesos, one of the main mechanisms used for years to finance public spending.
During an interview on the streaming of El Cronista, the economist stated that “monetary issuance, under certain circumstances, must have limits” and, when asked about the management during the governments she was part of, she ultimately recognized: “It may be that they went overboard”.
These statements are particularly striking given Marcó del Pont's role within the Kirchnerist economic scheme. The economist presided over the Central Bank from 2010 to 2013, during the second presidency of the convicted Cristina Kirchner, and was one of the protagonists of the reform of the Organic Charter of the entity approved in 2012.
Marcó del Pont also surprised with her hypocrisy by questioning the management of state resources. “I am critical of the management of spending; we need to review what the spending priorities are”, she stated. Additionally, she maintained that “we need to converge towards fiscal balance”, although she immediately sought to differentiate her proposal from the program implemented by the administration of Javier Milei by adding: “but not like this Government does”.
The acknowledgment comes just weeks after the former official herself questioned the Milei Government's intention to reform the Organic Charter of the Central Bank, precisely to limit monetary discretion and re-establish the preservation of the currency's value as the central objective of the institution.
On that occasion, Milei directly responded to Marcó del Pont and the former president of the BCRA Miguel Pesce, both critics of the official initiative. “If these two economic illiterates complain, it is a good sign, since given the disaster they have caused, doing the opposite is a good intuition,” wrote the president.
In the announcement of the new reform of the Organic Charter, Milei pointed against Cristina and Marcó del Pont
The President has also been questioning the monetary reform promoted during the Kirchnerism. In another recent intervention, he blamed Cristina Kirchner and Marcó del Pont for the management of the Central Bank's assets and asserted that “they stole 10 billion dollars from the Central Bank”.
Marcó del Pont's admission is particularly relevant given the results left by the model she managed and now downplays. Argentina ended 2023 with an annual inflation rate of 211.4%, after years of fiscal deficit, currency controls, and monetary financing of the Treasury.
Now, with the economic damage already done and repaired under Milei's administration, Marcó del Pont acknowledges the need to set limits on issuance, review spending priorities, and move towards fiscal balance, precisely some of the principles that Kirchnerism questioned for years and that the current president has turned into pillars of his economic program.
