Poverty in Argentina rose to more than 52 percent of the population in the first six months of the presidency of self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei, according to official data released Thursday.
The report for the first half of 2024 shows that 52.9 percent of Argentines, or 15.7 million people, now live in poverty and almost one in five are in need.
The poverty rate has risen from 41.7 percent in the second half of 2023, the statistics agency INDEC said.
Since taking office in December, Milei’s government has implemented a drastic austerity program aimed at eliminating the budget deficit and curbing chronic inflation.
It has cut subsidies for transport, fuel and energy, even as thousands of civil servants have lost their jobs.
Monthly inflation in Argentina was 4.0 percent in July, the lowest in 2.5 years, before rising again to 4.2 percent in August.
The annual rate of 236.7 percent in August remains one of the highest in the world.
In December, when Milei took office, monthly inflation rose 25.5 percent after he devalued the peso by more than 50 percent.
This move, in addition to severe cuts, strangled purchasing power.
In January, the government reported its first monthly budget surplus in almost twelve years.
– ‘We have all become poorer’ –
Critics say Milei’s few successes have come at the expense of the poor and working class.
GDP fell by 1.7 percent in the second quarter and unemployment rose to 7.6 percent, with women hit hardest.
“In a country where poverty is measured by income, we have all become poorer,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on Thursday ahead of the INDEC publication, which he said would reflect a “harsh reality”.
“The best way to fight poverty is to fight inflation,” he added.
Economist Marina Dal Poggetto said this approach “excludes many people” and “creates an increasingly fractured society.”
One of those people is Viviana Quevedo, 57, who lost her job as a maid in December and has been unable to find a new one.
She spoke to AFP on a sidewalk in Buenos Aires, holding up a sign that read: “Work wanted.”
Quevedo said she lost her accommodation because she could no longer pay her rent and was about to end up on the streets, after spending the last of her money on a hotel for herself and her 13-year-old daughter.
She said she has received the equivalent of $85 from the government for child care — a far cry from the $108 a month someone needs to not qualify as needy.
“The reality we live in is terrifying; there is a great fear because hunger brings fear, hunger brings fear,” Quevedo said from behind the face mask she wears to hide her missing teeth.
“I have never experienced a situation like this in my life,” she said.
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