BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Irma Casal, a 53-year-old in Buenos Aires, works three shifts as a garbage recycler, cardboard collector and bricklayer, but, like many Argentines at a time of rising poverty, she still struggles to make ends meet.
Argentina will publish poverty data on Thursday that is expected to show the rate soaring to over 50% in the first six months of the term of libertarian President Javier Milei, who has enacted tough austerity measures in a bid to dig the country out of debt.
“Since this government came to power, jobs have dropped away. We work twice as hard for less and we have to keep going,” said Casal, who has 14 children and 42 grandchildren, in the low-income Buenos Aires suburb of Villa Fiorito.
The official data for the January-June period will be the first hard evidence of how far poverty has risen since Milei took over in December. The official poverty rate was 41.7% for the second half of 2023.
Milei’s spending cuts have been cheered by markets and investors for helping right the state’s finances after years of deficits, but have pushed the country into a deep recession, although there are signs the economy could now be bottoming out.
The Catholic University of Argentina’s (UCA) observatory estimates the poverty rate soared to 55.5% in the first quarter of the year before easing to 49.4% in the second quarter. That gives a 52% average for the first six months.
‘ANY LEVEL OF POVERTY IS HORRENDOUS’
Agustin Salvia, director of the UCA’s Observatory, said that there was a significant impact at the start of the year from Milei’s policies. However, there had been signs of an improvement recently, he added.
“If you look at the whole story, is shows a deterioration in the first quarter. That situation has since started to ease,” he said.
Argentina’s government has cut some welfare programs and reduced support to soup kitchens, but argues that it has also expanded two key welfare programs, the Universal Child Allowance and a Food Card program, giving direct support to families.
“Any level of poverty is horrendous,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said in a daily press conference on Thursday, blaming mismanagement by previous governments for leaving economic “bombs” that Milei was now trying to deactivate.
“What has been done in social terms in Argentina in the last 50 years is shameful… We are doing everything, everything, everything so that this situation changes.”