Ezequiel Burgo
11/07/2020 21:03
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 11/07/2020 21:24
On Thursday, the Minister of Economy,
Martín Guzmán
, explained in a radio interview what any
economics
student at
the CBC
hears in classrooms.
For the more distracted, at most, in the first year of college.
That the
issue
generates
inflation
, that
prices
transmit signals for
investment
, that
subsidies
generate
inequities
, that the
fiscal balance
matters.
The minister noticed him loose, loquacious, and not only because of another week of calm in the dollar or the comfort of the questions (it was in the Victor Hugo Morales program) but because his role as a teacher and way of teaching think about the economy in a non-sectarian way.
As someone once said, the minister has
orthodox
and
heterodox
definitions
.
This is how it was reflected and is relevant for the definitions that the minister seeks with the IMF (see more separately).
Guzmán explained to an audience and public related to the Government that
"You have to understand that to order the economy you have to maintain a certain balance
.
"
He said that all sectors of the economy must make an effort and not just ask them to pay less taxes.
"The fiscal deficit must be lowered and revenues cannot decrease
.
"
He then made a comment about a front that earned him more of a headache.
When the Central Bank issued pesos in April to finance increased spending during the pandemic, the minister was not shy about saying that those bills, in part, went to the dollar.
"You have to be careful there."
He even admitted that the measures announced by the Central Bank in September to strengthen the stocks,
"generated more anxiety, they all sped up to get out of the pesos and it did not work
.
"
Guzmán, as an academic, surrenders to the evidence.
“It is very important not to fall into dogmatism.
You have to understand that when something must be corrected, it must be done ”
.
Someone who has seen it
work in meetings says:
"Guzman once asked 'What we are doing serves or does not serve for what we have to accomplish, what are the alternatives?'"
.
Continuing with the Guzmán-Víctor Hugo exchange, which even Maradona spoke about, they ask the minister why the rates cannot remain frozen.
Is that the Government announced that from January they will rise.
They even pointed out to the minister if they could not go back to the levels of 2015, before the increases of Juan José Aranguren.
"Maintaining the rate freeze for a long time means that the subsidy burden increases and someone has to finance it
.
"
Guzmán explained that in that case the more affluent sectors of the population would be benefiting and companies would not invest.
"Guzmán has to go out and explain more
," someone who advises the President at the Government House told him weeks ago.
Alberto Fernández transmitted that to his minister.
Guzmán
does not speak to the market but to the government bases
, to the hardest nucleus that asks why it is necessary to adjust, why it is necessary to pay the debt to the IMF and negotiate an agreement if the money was requested by Macri, why is it necessary to raise rates if Néstor Kirchner has fought with the energy companies since he took office.
Guzmán responds with the macroeconomics manual.
And perhaps, while the dollar is under control, her political backing is Cristina Kirchner because Guzmán does not think like Pesce, Cecilia Todesca or the Callao group.
It is less doctrinaire.
In La Cámpora they say that they manage to see a red thread in this whole story.
Cristina Kirchner respects and listens to economists of profiles like Guzmán.
At the time he bet on Martín Lousteau and Axel Kicillof.
Guzmán today has a different task from that of his predecessors: explaining why what was done 15 years ago today cannot be financed.
