Economy Minister Luis Caputo announced that the government is working on labor and tax reforms, as well as benefits to incentivize businesses to save in pesos. Although he did not provide any specific details nor offer any timeline for when they might happen, he said they will be part of the “second stage” of President Javier Milei’s government.
“We clearly need a more agile and dynamic labor regimen that will end the industry of [labor] trials,” Caputo said in a recorded message that was streamed during the Coloquio IDEA business forum on Thursday. The event is an annual gathering for businesspeople from diverse sectors. Announcements for the private sector are typically made during that forum.
He added that the current labor regimen is “archaic, rigid, and unpredictable” and “only favors a handful in the detriment of the rest of Argentines.”
Caputo is currently in Washington, where he is attending the 2025 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He has been in Washington for the past weeks negotiating bailout tools for Argentina from the U.S. government.
Talking about the current labor norms, Caputo said that businesspeople are “the ones who suffer them the most, which is why employment has not increased since 2011.”
“You know better than me the difficulties created when hiring people, especially for SMEs, where sometimes firing someone can cause them to shut down their company or business.”
The government is also planning “important incentives” for businesses to save in pesos. They aim for that money to be invested into the private sector so that it can grow.
Caputo said that the Milei administration is not planning a devaluation and that he “finds it archaic” to believe that “the only way Argentina can be competitive is by having a weak currency.”
“We believe that the only way to get competitive is with more deregulations, lowering taxes, [pushing] labor and tax reforms, and start having much more long-term funding with much more reasonable rates,” he said, adding that they are working so that Argentina can be “one of the most free countries in the next 20 years.”
