Business leaders Thursday, October 30, 2014 'Argentina is not in crisis'

Business leaders

Thursday, October 30, 2014

'Argentina is not in crisis'

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner speaks during a conference organized by the ADIMRA business group.

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has defended the economic model followed by her government and warned about certain opposition comments that, according to her, aim at encouraging “negative expectations” on the country’s economy, to later ease the way to economic budget cuts.

During a speech at Parque Norte before business leaders gathered in the ADIMRA group, Ms Kirchner stated she suspects opposition candidates to the presidency in 2015 are hiding their intentions to go back to neoliberal-based markets.

“When they speak of leaving behind the consumption-based economy to pay attention to business revenue and investments, it sounds like they are trying to go back to something like the trickle-down theory,” she said.

“This also has to do with a media-related phenomenon. It’s quite peculiar. They are trying to set a mood in public opinion, to generate negative expectations. And my worst fear is that these negative expectations find their way into the people, and make them believe we are in a crisis,” she added.

CFK said Argentina is not in a crisis, arguing financial surplus is still good and that trade surplus and consumption have weakened but there are not in critical levels. “And as regards employment, we have not been creating as much as we did before, but we are in a stable situation.”

“We are not in Disney, but we are not in a crisis either,” the President summarized.

For the head of state, opposition candidates, together with media groups, are trying to impose a conservative agenda to be able to introduce economic budget cuts starting in 2015.

“They will try to reverse the re-industrialization process kirchnerism has followed, which is not only an economic model, but also a cultural model. They want to go back not to the 90’s, but to 1976, when the dictatorship swept away every achievement accomplished in the industrial sector, because they settle with importing everything, because they don’t like anything that is produced here,” she concluded