Sergio Massa, Argentine economy minister and presidential candidate, has announced that, if elected, his new government plan would include launching a national digital currency that local media has called the “crypto peso.” Massa also stated that this plan would involve a tax reduction for transactions that use this new currency.
Argentine Presidential Candidate Sergio Massa Announces National Digital Currency
Sergio Massa, the current Argentine economy minister and a presidential candidate, has declared that his government plan would include the creation of an Argentine digital currency. During the first presidential debate, Massa stated that this proposal would be linked to a tax reduction for transactions that leverage this new currency.
Detailing his digital currency proposal, he stated:
We are going to launch the Argentine digital currency. Just as your children propose in their platform economy the possibility of trading with their cell phone or card, we are going to do it globally for all of Argentina.
Massa, however, was scant on details and did not specify if the proposal referred to a digitization of the peso or the launch of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
In addition, Massa announced that he would introduce a new money laundering law to allow Argentines who have funds outside the country to leverage them without having to pay new taxes.
Digitization vs. Dollarization
The digitization of the Argentine currency has already been addressed by some analysts, who have stated that the proposal’s objective was to bring transactions to the formal market, curbing rampant tax evasion.
A similar proposal was presented last year by Carlos Maria De Los Santos, a banker who argues that tax evasion rates reach around 50% today, and the implementation of the total digitization of the Argentine currency would result in a yearly surplus of up to 20% for the country’s economy.
Massa’s proposal is an alternative to the dollarization plan that libertarian candidate Javier Milei, who won the preliminary elections in August, has presented as a way of stabilizing Argentina’s inflation, which reached 124% yearly that same month.
While experts have bashed Milei’s dollarization plan, this and the ideas of reducing the size of the state have put it at the top of the polls, which gives him an advantage of up to 11% just four weeks before the first round of the elections.
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