Argentina's president-elect Nestor Kirchner said Sunday that he would increase utility rates, just days after he was elected by default when his rival dropped out of the race.
Kirchner, who has said his first priority would be to battle the poverty that affects almost 60 percent of Argentina's 32 million people, promised that the rate increases would be modest.
"It's going to be a smaller increase than many think," he told the Pagina/12 newspaper.
Previous attempts by the government to hike the rates, under pressure from the European companies that provide such services as water, telephone and electricity, have been defeated by the courts.
Argentina's utilities were privatized in the 1990s under president Carlos Menem, who granted Kirchner victory by dropping out of the run-off election.
Utility companies want to raise their rates to balance out their costs after the peso lost two-thirds of its value in January last year.
Kirchner also told the paper that the peso's current value of nearly three to one US dollar was the right exchange rate.
"I want a competitive dollar, a dollar at three pesos is good for Argentina," he said.
Kirchner added that he was planning a public works program to bolster the economy.
"We don't want public works based on debt, we want public works with genuine growth," he said. "The first step will be to finish all the uncompleted projects in the country, as many housing and infrastructure projects have been abandoned."
Kirchner faces a daunting task in reviving an economy that was once a regional powerhouse.
One of his first tasks after taking office on May 25 will be the renegotiation of more than US$55 billion in foreign debt on which Argentina defaulted in December 2001.
Kirchner's government also will rapidly need to negotiate an agreement with the IMF, which had pledged US$2.98 billion to repay Argentina's debts to multilateral organizations, in a bid to tide the troubled country over until after the election.
His government team also will face the arduous task of restructuring the financial system that was rocked by heavy turbulence last year, as bank savings were frozen and the currency's peg to the US dollar was scrapped.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion