Milei presents BCRA reform on national broadcast: aims to prohibit issuance and toughen penalties

In a move that promises to stir the waters of power, the Government confirmed that President Javier Milei will be in charge of personally announcing the reform of the Central Bank’s charter. The presentation, which would be made on a national broadcast next week, comes after the political meeting at the Casa Rosada this Tuesday.

The project, worked on jointly with ministers Luis Caputo (Economy) and Federico Sturzenegger (Deregulation), and the head of the entity, Santiago Bausili, aims to restore the BCRA’s mandate to defend the value of the currency. But that’s not all: it also seeks to prohibit the financing of public spending through the National Treasury, that is, the direct purchase of public securities and temporary advances. Additionally, it will prevent the creation of Non-Transferable Treasury Bills.

The Executive also wants to give more stability to the Central authorities and toughen the requirements for removing the president and the board. Official sources assure that this aims to strengthen «governance» and legal certainty. One of the mechanisms would be to give greater weight to the validation of directors by the Senate, an issue that was already discussed between Milei and the head of the bench in the upper house, Patricia Bullrich.

But the main course comes on the side of sanctions. The project seeks to restrict the distribution of BCRA profits, except in exceptional cases such as deflation, and to incorporate into the Penal Code punishments for future authorities who, directly or indirectly, use the Central Bank to finance the fiscal deficit through monetary issuance. A similar attempt, the Fiscal and Monetary Stability project last year, came to nothing in Congress. Now, Milei is back on the offensive.

The reform will be complemented by the fiscal «shutdown,» which will be activated when the State goes into deficit. All this, if it gets approval from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Meanwhile, tomorrow Caputo will present at the Ministry of Economy the Fiscal Innocence Law II, which seeks to get Argentines to take dollars out from under the mattress by nullifying penalties for evasion.

At Tuesday’s political meeting were Karina Milei, Diego Santilli, Ignacio Devitt, Santiago Caputo, Luis Caputo, Patricia Bullrich, Martín Menem, Eduardo «Lule» Menem, and Fabián Fernández. The meeting lasted two hours and, in the official photo, Karina and Lule Menem were seen sitting at the ends of the sofa, with Santiago Caputo in the middle, reflecting the two competing terminals within the ruling party.

Despite the legislative recess, the parliamentary agenda remains central. In the last Senate session, the Government suffered a setback with the inviolability of private property project, which had to be postponed due to lack of votes. However, at Tuesday’s meeting they avoided delving into the issue and sought to show cohesion.

For his part, Santilli announced that tomorrow he will receive Governor Maximiliano Pullaro (Santa Fe) for the transfer of road works, and next week he has meetings with authorities from Catamarca and Santiago del Estero to advance infrastructure plans.