BUENOS AIRES, June 27 (Reuters) – Two voluminous bills with which the ultra-liberal president Javier Milei intends to attract investments would receive the final sanction of the Chamber of Deputies of Argentina on Thursday, which would approve a sweetened version of the mega-reform.
After years of a crisis that has brought inflation to over 200% annually and has caused poverty to rise to almost 50% of the population, Milei – who has called the legislators who opposed the projects “coup plotters” – seeks with the sanction of the law a political victory that will allow him to demonstrate his management capacity before the markets.
For this reason, the histrionic president agreed to give in on many articles of his mega-reform in order to achieve the consensus of a fragmented opposition, since the ruling party is in a large minority in both chambers of Parliament.
At the end of April, the Lower House already approved the “Bases Law” and a tax reform project, norms that were ratified with modifications in a tight vote in the Senate two weeks ago, with the rejection of center-left Peronism.
But now the deputies must vote on the changes applied by the Senate, which they can accept or reject without their decision affecting the bulk of the articles of the laws, already approved by both chambers.
“There is no chance that the law will not come out. It will come out yes or yes, the discussion is which of the two versions,” the deputy of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) Martín Tetaz told CNN Radio Argentina.
The “Bases Law”, also known as the “omnibus” due to its volume, proposes tax benefits for multi-million dollar investments, the privatization of public companies, money laundering and special powers for the president, while the tax reform modifies the rates to high salaries and personal property.
The legislators are expected to keep the state-owned companies Aerolíneas Argentinas, Correo Argentino and the public media system exempt from the privatization process – which includes transport, energy and service companies.
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At the same time, they would approve the changes in taxes on salaries and personal property that were discarded by the Upper House.
However, center-left opposition legislators announced that they could turn to the courts to stop the application of laws that they consider border on “unconstitutionality.”
Milei had originally sent the rules to Congress shortly after taking power in December, but they were rejected. After arduous negotiations with centre-right allies and the centrist opposition, which resulted in the scaling back of the original 600-plus articles of the “Ley Bases” to the current 238, the president managed to get them accepted.
(Reporting by Nicolás Misculin, editing by Lucila Sigal)
