President Javier Milei confirmed in the last few hours that next week he will appoint the current advisor without portfolio, Federico Sturzenegger, to a deregulation ministry. However, the former BCRA minister under Macri has already been discussing a series of issues with the president to make his desire to dismantle different state agencies a reality. According to what they told Page I12 According to official sources, Sturzenegger has already warned the president that an organization that is central to monitoring tax evasion in the agricultural sector must be closed. The decision is the first major favor to business sectors that comes with the new stage of economic management, the total liberalization of the variables that Sturzenegger is going to implement.
Specifically, the economist called for the elimination of the former National Office of Agricultural Trade Control (ONCCA), an organization that in 2011 changed its name to the Unit for Coordination and Evaluation of Domestic Consumption Subsidies.. With this move – which will be part of a massive elimination of other organizations – the brand new future minister not only gets the tax monitoring off of mills, poultry production and meat processing plants (being the sector that evades the most, reaching 50 percent of informality in the milling sector); but also anticipates what will be a stark internal situation: the former ONCCA has been, since 2011, under the tutelage of the Ministry of Economy, which today is led by its antagonist, Luis Caputo.
In conversations with Milei, Sturzenegger suggested that, to replace the task of the former ONCCA, the AFIP be ordered to carry out these controls. The problem there lies in the fact that, in addition to the fact that the elimination of the portfolio is controversial for ethical reasons, the treasury is technically incapable of replacing it in its functions: AFIP carries out tax control, not marketing control. “It is a way for them to stop doing what they have to do, which is to observe and report the levels of informality in those sectors,” someone who knows the story told this newspaper.
Sturzenegger’s decision caused a stir in the agricultural sectorwhich complained, from the most formalized sectors, that with the lifting of controls on evaders, the black market increases and competition becomes illegal.
Super Minister Pac-Man
In a television interview, Milei was asked where Sturzenegger will be sent, and responded that his appointment is imminent. “More structural reforms are coming. Next week, we will appoint Dr. Sturzenegger. We are going to remove what he calls the Law of Litter, which is a set of regulations that hinder the functioning of the economic system. There are 100 laws that are eliminated, but they imply more structural reforms than 100 laws.”
This reform includes modifications in portfolios that Sturzenegger had also requested to be within his super-ministry, among them Agriculture and Senasa, today also under the tutelage of Caputo. Federico, those who know him say, wants to “devour himself” Bioeconomythe secretary led by Fernando Vilella, a technician who lives on the brink of dismissal due to the lust for power that surrounds him.
At the same time, the suspended advisor promised Milei that all tax exemptions for companies that were not achieved in the Ley Bases and the fiscal package will be part of his package of measures.
As this newspaper warned last week, It was Santiago Caputo, the president’s confidant, and the Chief of Staff, Guillermo Francos, who had to convince Milei to stop Sturzenegger’s claims, in order to try to protect “Toto”, the head of the Treasury, from his advance..
Initially, Milei would have agreed not to give him all the power, but Stuzenegger is selling the idea that the president supports him as the architect of a new stage. He even started a very strong lobby in his favor, part of the team of economic advisors led by Demian Reidel, former official of Federico at the BCRA and former banker at JP Morgan; and he also has the support of businessmen who are publicly saying that the new stage of economic management has to do with his assumption of power.
