Caputo, the Broker-Minister Who Promises Dollars He Doesn't Have: The 2026/2027 Financial Plan Is Smoke

The government of Javier Milei has the virtue of presenting failures as achievements, and is fortunate that a broad right-wing business and media apparatus validates this inversion of meaning. Several economic variables show mediocre to poor results, but the official narrative still presents them with a favorable bias. In this regard, one notable case is the debt payment capacity. The economic team presented, in a press conference, the 2026/2027 financial plan to show that it has the dollars to pay all maturities in that period. In reality, it does not.

Political scientist Nicolás Tereschuk posted a thread on his X account illustrating the times when Economy Minister Luis Caputo reported that he had the dollars to cover maturities “and then he didn’t.” The sequence is striking.

When observing this succession of Caputo’s interventions, a logical reading can be made: he is an official with a particular tendency to distract the population from critical situations and create positive expectations among economic agents, as any economy minister does. That is not the case with Caputo. Although there may be some of that usual behavior in officials, Caputo’s is something else. It is the way of acting — in its most negative aspects — of a city broker.

This type of broker, as they say in the market, is a smooth talker, because he promises high returns with no risk to attract clients. He is also ambitious, because he encourages his clients to constantly trade to earn commissions on each transaction, regardless of whether the client wins or loses. And he is irresponsible, because he risks other people’s money through deception, while shielding himself from negative consequences. This is the definition of a dishonest broker or an unscrupulous financial advisor. Here a central point emerges: a broker of this kind makes an investor-client lose money; instead, when a financial player like Caputo occupies the strategic position of Economy Minister and acts like that kind of broker, the costs of his irresponsibility are borne by society for many years.

Foreign investment funds, local operators, and financial analysts assess that the availability of dollars is insufficient to meet the hefty maturities this year and next. For this reason, although the country risk index has fallen, it is still insufficient to open the doors to financing in the international voluntary credit market. Such is the distrust that neither the IMF’s endorsement by approving the second review of the agreement, nor the improvement in the ratings from risk agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s, managed to create conditions for issuing debt bonds abroad at an acceptable rate.

Faced with this critical outlook, because Caputo does not have the dollars to pay, the economic team desperately came out to show that it does have them with the 2026/2027 financial program. However, when analyzed rigorously and not with a condescending view, whether due to ideological-political identification or the interest in preserving one’s own business, the weaknesses of that program become apparent. The main point is that it is based on overly optimistic financial assumptions and ignores that 2027 is an election year, a time when the demand for dollars for exchange rate hedging repeatedly increases substantially.

Caputo presented the financial plan until the end of Milei’s term, but he still does not have all the dollars to pay the maturity due tomorrow (July 9) for about 4.5 billion dollars. The Treasury has 3.9 billion dollars deposited in the Central Bank, and the balance can be completed with freely available reserves from the monetary authority or by a loan from foreign entities against guarantees from the World Bank. This fragility fully displays the smooth-talker trait of broker Caputo, in charge of the Ministry of Economy. The financial program can only be fulfilled if the country risk continues to fall, if the Treasury can renew and expand dollar-denominated debt issued in the local market, if the Central Bank continues to accumulate reserves, and if the liquidation of public assets through privatizations advances.

The day after Caputo’s presentation of the financial program, the consulting firm PxQ, led by Emmanuel Álvarez Agis, distributed the report “Paying with What We Have,” in reference to Aldo Ferrer’s “Living with What We Have.” The report highlights that “the officials’ goal was to show that it will not be necessary to seek new financing for the needs of the next year and a half.” The title of the PxQ report is based on the fact that among the financial sources, issuances in the local market for 7 billion dollars, a loan from international banks guaranteed by International Organizations for 4 billion, and privatizations for 2.3 billion stand out. Additionally, the economic team indicated that it expects to obtain a bilateral credit of 2 billion dollars in 2027.

The PxQ report highlights that the salient points of the financial program presentation are that, in the remaining year and a half of the term, the Treasury expects to buy 11.6 billion dollars from the Central Bank to pay foreign currency debt maturities, and that the strategy of issuing dollar-denominated bonds in the local market will continue to be prioritized. “This implies a deterioration of the BCRA’s firepower heading into the election year, where the demand for dollars will surely increase.” Caputo stated that access to the international capital market will only occur if the country risk falls. According to PxQ’s estimate, it should drop between 70 and 100 basis points; the last close was 407 points. If that decline does not materialize in the coming months, it will be complicated for it to happen next year because international investors are likely to have a conservative strategy due to the election year, and at the same time, the demand for dollars will increase. “In this scenario, both the private sector and the public sector will be pressing for the same thing, the BCRA’s reserves, the former to hedge against electoral uncertainty, the latter to pay sovereign debt,” states the Álvarez Agis report. And it concludes that “as it was set out, the program does not seem sufficient to shield 2027.”

The broker-minister presented a program to convince the market and society that he has the dollars to pay the debt maturities until the end of Milei’s government. However, the precise analysis of the figures reveals that Caputo does not have those dollars and that, to be consistent with his career as an official, first with Macri and now with Milei, the final balance of his management will be an increase in public debt.

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