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.
