Miley’s economic laboratory is full of findings beyond production and the well-being of households. let’s see. In accounting terms, the government can prove its success: by October, it has accumulated a primary surplus close to 1.4% of GDP and aims to close the year at the 1.6% level agreed with the IMF. With the inflation rate reaching around 30%, the lowest since 2017.
But these are cold numbers, and they are the result of a model that did not work in Argentina. Surplus and adjustment are two sides of the same coin, and this is the main anchor for the slowdown in inflation. This result is based above all on the significant reduction in public investment. 2025 shows, in the ten-month backlog, national capital spending falling by more than 80% in real terms compared to the same period in 2023, with subsidies ranking second in cuts, down 58.7% in the same comparison, fueling a “crippling public works surplus.” The gist of the model is clear: fiscal adjustment through spending, salary stabilization, and trade openness focused on imported goods, with the real exchange rate not that high, biased in favor of the financial sector, and with an unprecedented lack of control over prices. The result is not an opening for the productive map to expand, but rather an opening for its contraction. Since Miley took office, the number of registered companies has fallen by 19,164, and the number of formal private jobs has fallen by 138,573, with the greatest damage occurring in industrial provinces such as Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Santa Fe.
The “organized” economy in the treasury or central payroll becomes narrower in area. Sturzenegger said in 2015 that the economy could only be repaired “if people lose their jobs.” Once again, they deliver. Clearly, what the current deregulatory minister has said – and continues to think – is more ideological than technical.
Construction summarizes the logic of software better than any other sector. By analogy with Argentina’s Building and Construction Index, the ISAC index is just beginning to show slight positive differences between years in 2025, but does so after a very deep decline in 2024. Data from the Instituto Argentina Grande (IAG) Construction Index show that even with the recovery identified in September, construction activity (including public works) in October 2025 remains about 46% below the 2023 average, after a new monthly decline of 11%. This collapse means less labor-intensive employment opportunities, especially in suburban areas and large urban agglomerations where public and private works absorb low-skilled workers and supplement family incomes. This is a situation that the current government does not seek to correct, but rather pushes towards further marginalization. It is the manufacturing and construction sectors that have lost the most formal jobs (more than 105,000 jobs since November 2023), while mining is losing jobs (possibly due to a combination of factors in which process automation plays a role). Then there is no case. What is happening is not working.
If you look at the microphone, the image is more eloquent. Nearly half of households (48%) had to use some strategy to make ends meet: 35% spent their savings, about 10% sold their possessions, and almost a quarter went into debt with acquaintances or financial institutions. This means that a large part of society that resists the negative consequences of the model cannot be explained by improved current income, but rather by reducing household capital and increasing debt.
On the formal financial system side, between June 2024 and July 2025, the amounts owed by people to banks and financial entities doubled in real terms, while the number of debtors remained at about 15 million people, about a third of the population.
This dynamic also occurs in the context of a historical peak in delinquency: 9.1% of personal loans and 7.4% of credit cards are delinquent, the highest values since comparable records have existed (2010). For the first time, the use of cards and arrears is increasing at the same time, indicating two simultaneous phenomena: households unable to stop financing their current expenses with plastic, and a consumption breakout where one part of the population maintains high levels of spending while another part falls behind month after month.
Businesses are not immune either. In September, more than 92,000 checks were rejected due to lack of funds, the highest value in the past five years and an increase of more than 100% compared to the end of 2023, according to data processed by IAG from the BCRA. Checks are a tool strongly associated with SME and corporate operations; Their deterioration indicates increasing short circuits in the real drive chain.
This web of debt and default builds an economy that thrives on informal gaps. Overall consumption remains stagnant: sales at wholesale self-service are down more than 13% year-on-year and remain more than 11% below the 2023 average under the current administration, while department stores are showing only a barely marginal positive variance.
The result is a society where households selling household appliances for card payment coexist with other households taking advantage of the opening to travel to Europe or increase imported consumption. Some will remember this leading actor’s performances in foreign films such as “The Nineties.”
Contrast helps you think about alternatives. While the nation maintains a surplus by cutting investment, for 2026 the province of Buenos Aires plans capital spending equivalent to 7.3% of its budget – roughly the same amount the nation allocates to public works, despite the fact that the national budget is three times that of the province.
An alternative model could be implemented for Argentina today under the public accounts system: moving from adjustment based on income monetization and labor paralysis to fiscal consolidation supported by growth, productivity, and formal integration.
* Coordinator of the economic field at the Argentine Grande Institute.
IGhernanpherrera