From closing the central bank to reforming it: Milei's shift on monetary authority

Thursday, July 30th 2026 - 23:05 UTC The core of the bill is a ban on direct and indirect financing of the state by the institution Argentine President Javier Milei presented on Thursday, in a nationwide broadcast, a bill to overhaul the central bank's charter, the statute governing the monetary authority, in an initiative the government considers central to its economic program and which it will send to the Chamber of Deputies in the coming days. The core of the bill is a ban on direct and indirect financing of the state by the institution. It envisages eliminating temporary advances to the Treasury, restricting purchases of government paper in the primary market and scrapping non-transferable notes, the mechanism through which the Treasury obtained dollars from reserves in exchange for securities that cannot be traded. It would also cap transfers of accounting profits: gains arising from asset revaluation would go into a technical reserve rather than fund current spending. The initiative additionally seeks to reverse the reform passed in 2012 under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, which broadened the institution's objectives to include financial stability, employment and economic development with social equity, and loosened the mechanisms for assisting the Treasury. The government argues that this multiplicity of objectives allowed successive administrations to finance the deficit through money printing. Milei has criticized in personal terms Mercedes Marcó del Pont, who headed the central bank when that amendment was approved. The bill would also tighten the requirements for removing the bank's president and board members, which according to circulated accounts would require two-thirds of the votes in both chambers. The charter currently in force is Law 24,144, enacted in 1992. The proposal marks a shift from the position Milei held as a candidate, when he repeatedly called for abolishing the central bank, which he blamed for Argentine inflation. In office, he opted instead for an institutional reform narrowing its functions and barring it from financing the Treasury. The president has framed the initiative as ending what he called 91 years of fraud, referring to the institution's creation in 1935. Those involved in drafting the bill include Economy Minister Luis Caputo; central bank President Santiago Bausili; and Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger, who headed the institution between 2015 and 2018. The reform is part of an economic package that, according to Argentine press reports, would also include a zero-deficit fiscal rule. To pass it, the government will need to negotiate with allied blocs and sections of the opposition.