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Milei urges Argentines to bank 'mattress dollars'

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16.06.2025

Thanks to sweeping spending cuts, Argentine President Javier Milei has managed to bring inflation in his country down from a monthly 25% in December 2023 to below 3% now, according to official data published by the country's INDEC statistics agency.

And yet, the cost of living in Argentina is still rising, forcing the libertarian leader to make another controversial proposal to the public.

He's called on his fellow citizens to spend their cash dollars squirreled away in mattresses and foreign bank accounts, long held by Argentines as a hedge against decades of economic turmoil.

Last week (June 5), Milei's government sent a bill called Fiscal Presumption of Innocence to Congress, declaring that the law ensures that there will be no more persecution of those Argentines holding undeclared dollars.

The measure widens a tax amnesty scheme rolled out last year which already lured tens of billions of dollars back into circulation.

During Milei's 2023 presidential election campaign, his supporters marched through the streets of Buenos Aires waving oversized dollar bills featuring their candidate's face. Milei himself called the Argentine peso "worth as much as shit," initially pledging to replace it with the US dollar as legal tender once he's elected.

Today,

© Deutsche Welle