₦airaland Forum

CrystalTiger:
This Argentine president, so intentional about making his country better..

liveLongNprospa:
Apparently nor be warri again.
Na wado city.
Itsekiri vs urhobo issue

OasisX:


.....Nkan Ẹni Ẹlẹni lo ń wá wùni ni Naija [Na someone's property we dey envy for Naija] LOL!

Do you know the effects of his policies so far?

.....lots of civil servants are jobless now, thanks to his policies. I guess you will praise PBAT if he does same?

Also, monthly tax revenue has dropped by more than a third, from $9.4 billion in November, to $6.07 billion in January.

Are you aware that after his first month in office, inflation grew from 12.8% to 29.9%?! Tinubu is getting cooked for inflation cos his policies too are resorting to inflation but we should be praising Javier Milei?!

Under his watch so far poverty count has risen by a third from 4 in 10 to 6 in 10 within 3 months in office. Una want reforms in Naija but they don't to sacrifice. Una wanna chop cake but still wanna have it?! LOL!

Taguchi:
Them still dey fight?

Thought it's been over for a very long time

Never heard of wado city but I know of Effurun

OasisX:


.....Nkan Ẹni Ẹlẹni lo ń wá wùni ni Naija [Na someone's property we dey envy for Naija] LOL!

Do you know the effects of his policies so far?

.....lots of civil servants are jobless now, thanks to his policies. I guess you will praise PBAT if he does same?

Also, monthly tax revenue has dropped by more than a third, from $9.4 billion in November, to $6.07 billion in January.

Are you aware that after his first month in office, inflation grew from 12.8% to 29.9%?! Tinubu is getting cooked for inflation cos his policies too are resorting to inflation but we should be praising Javier Milei?!

Under his watch so far poverty count has risen by a third from 4 in 10 to 6 in 10 within 3 months in office. Una want reforms in Naija but they don't to sacrifice. Una wanna chop cake but still wanna have it?! LOL!

Since taking office in December Javier Milei, Argentina’s new libertarian president, has wasted little time in trying to implement sweeping reforms. He has had one setback: earlier this month an “omnibus” bill of 664 articles was withdrawn after Mr Milei’s party failed to get enough support from Congress. However, Mr Milei has taken the “chainsaw” he promised to Argentina’s bloated state: the peso was devalued by 50% and annual subsidies worth 0.7% of GDP have started to be phased out. The number of government ministries has been reduced from 18 to nine. This week Mr Milei will describe his grand plans to the Conservative Political Action Conference in the United States, full of Donald Trump supporters. He will do so after meeting Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, in Buenos Aires.

But rather than try to emulate Trumpian bombast, Mr Milei should look closer to home for economic advice, specifically at Peru. At first glance this seems strange. Since 2016 Peru has become a byword for instability. Presidents have come and gone: the sixth in eight years is now in office. There have been three legislatures in that period. The country’s political gyrations included the election of Pedro Castillo, a hard-left president overthrown after attempting a coup against Congress and the judiciary. The killing by security forces of 50 protesters after he was ousted has helped to make Dina Boluarte, his replacement, deeply unpopular.


And yet through all this Peru’s currency, the sol, has been a beacon of stability (see chart). It has long been the most solid currency in South America. Against the dollar, it fluctuates from time to time, but it is worth the same as in 1999.

There are lessons in this for Mr Milei, who campaigned on ending chronic inflation by shutting down his country’s central bank and adopting the dollar in place of the peso. Peru suggests that is unnecessary. In the 1980s Peru suffered hyperinflation. In 1985 the shrivelled sol was withdrawn and replaced with the inti (“sun” in Quechua). To no avail: by 1990 the central bank was printing bills marked 5m intis but soon worth almost nothing. Streets in the centre of Lima, the capital, were filled with money-changers: the dollar came to account for over 80% of the money supply. A populist government operated several exchange rates, with cheap dollars for favoured importers—just as in Argentina under Mr Milei’s predecessor.

In 1990 a new president in Peru, Alberto Fujimori, implemented a radical programme of economic stabilisation and reform. The exchange rate was unified at a low rate and then allowed to float. Subsidies on fuel and utility bills were withdrawn overnight; the government stopped printing money and dismantled capital controls and trade barriers. Inflation had reached 2,800% in 1989. As relative prices adjusted, it peaked at 7,650% in 1990 before falling to 139% in 1991 and 6% by 1998. A new sol was introduced in 1991.
Economic exemplar

Having contracted by a quarter between 1988 and 1990, Peru’s economy began to grow, expanding by 5.2% in 1993. With only one or two blips, sustained growth ensued until last year. Mr Fujimori went on to shut down Congress and rule as an autocrat until 2000, but only after the passage of many of his reforms.

In this century, Peru has enjoyed the lowest inflation among Latin American countries with their own currency, points out Julio Velarde, the governor of the central bank. Peruvians have gradually come to trust the sol. Only 34% of bank deposits, 23% of bank loans and 8% of mortgages are now in dollars.

What explains the sol’s credibility? Start with the central bank. Mr Fujimori granted it constitutional independence. Although the governor and a further three of the seven members of the bank’s board are chosen by the country’s president, they have generally been professionals. Mr Velarde, who has been governor since 2006, enjoys the “total confidence” of financial markets, says Luis Miguel Castilla, a former finance minister. Even Mr Castillo, the left-winger, felt obliged to appoint him for a further term. “There’s a certain public consensus in favour of a prudent macroeconomy,” says Mr Velarde. The bank was among the first in the world to raise its interest rate, in August 2021, to scotch the global spike in inflation. It began cutting again in September. Inflation is now at 3%. With the Federal Reserve slow to cut its own rates, that is prompting some depreciation of the sol.

Structural economic factors may be even more important in the sol’s success. Richard Webb, a former central-bank governor, points out that Peru has enjoyed almost 30 years of “a productive boom of dollars”. Mr Fujimori’s economic opening unleashed export growth. And “a revolution in transport” has facilitated a steady increase in food production in the Andes, adds Mr Webb, lessening pressure for food imports. Add to that a steady flow of foreign investment, and all this has allowed the central bank to accumulate international reserves of $74bn, equal to around 28% of GDP, the highest figure in the region. That gives it the heft to defend the currency against volatility. “It’s enough that the market knows we could intervene,” says Mr Velarde.

In much of this Argentina could profitably copy Peru. Two things are at the root of Argentines’ longstanding mistrust of the peso. One is persistent fiscal deficits that governments have financed by forcing the central bank to print money. Mr Milei is stopping that. The second is protectionism. Even with a bumper agricultural harvest in 2022, Argentina’s exports that year were only 14% of GDP, compared with 26% in Peru. And Argentina’s nationalist economic policies deterred foreign investment. The result is that its central bank has exhausted its international reserves.

Mr Milei’s proposal to impose dollarisation and shut the central bank attacks the symptom rather than the cause. An earlier Argentine president, Carlos Menem, imposed a kind of soft dollarisation in the 1990s, fixing the peso by law at par to the greenback. But Mr Menem was fiscally lax and Argentina’s economy differs too much from that of the United States to form what economists call an optimal currency area. Over time the peso became overvalued; a successor government had to impose wrenching deflation, which could not prevent a financial collapse in 2001-02.

Since taking office Mr Milei has said little about dollarisation. He has shown willingness to rule by decree, but has so far lacked the political skill to pass reforms in Congress. He was in Israel when the omnibus bill was withdrawn. Since returning to Argentina he has made headlines for picking spats with a pop star and calling Congress a “den of rats”. Such belligerence will make it harder for him to succeed.

As for Peru, the sol faces a medium-term test. Partly because of political instability, the economy shrank by 0.6% last year. It is forecast to grow again this year, but by only 2-3%.

Mr Castilla, the former finance minister, worries that the next election in Peru, due in 2026, could throw up a populist president who would compromise the central bank’s independence. But for now most Peruvians continue to keep their money in their national currency, a luxury Argentines have yet to enjoy.

liveLongNprospa:
Omo.. It's currently on oo.
For now it's not physical fight.
But they've started changing the addresses in these areas outside warri.
Warri is actually not that big when you think about it and alot of places are called warri when they are not.

Apparently itsekiri sef dey claim cities.

I just found out that warri refinery is not actually in warri but in wado city.
So they are planning to rename it🤣.

My own na make fight nor break out

Ibime:
Funny how both policies of Milei and Tinubu are almost the same

Nigeria 2024 budget is 36% less than 2023 while Milei devalued Argentina currency by over 50% in December and removed their fuel subsidies.

Shock therapy is shock therapy.

Argentine President Milei warns economic shock unavoidable in maiden speech
By Nicolás Misculin and Candelaria Grimberg
December 11, 202312:04 AM GMT+1Updated 2 months ago

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Argentina libertarian economist Javier Milei took office on Sunday warning in his maiden speech that he had no alternative to a sharp, painful fiscal shock to fix the country's worst economic crisis in decades, with inflation heading towards 200%.
"There is no alternative to a shock adjustment," he said on the steps on Congress after taking the presidential baton and sash, with crowds of supporters cheering despite Milei saying the economy would worsen in the short term. "There is no money."

Milei, 53, a former TV pundit who shot to fame with expletive-ridden tirades against rivals, China, and the pope, is taking over from Peronist leader Alberto Fernandez, whose government was dogged by failures to rein in soaring prices.

"The outgoing government has left us on track towards hyperinflation," Milei said. "We are going to do everything we can to avoid such a catastrophe."

While the speech was light on details, he said key steps would include a fiscal adjustment equivalent to 5% of the country's GDP through cuts that he said would fall on "the state and not the private sector."
The wild-haired outsider marks a major gamble for Argentina: his shock therapy economic plan of sharp spending cuts has gone down well with investors and could stabilize the embattled economy, but it risks pushing more people into hardship with over two-fifths already in poverty.

However, voters - who drove Milei to victory in a November run-off against a ruling Peronist coalition candidate - have said they were willing to roll the dice on his sometimes radical ideas that include shutting the central bank and dollarizing.
"He is the last hope we have left," said 72-year-old doctor Marcelo Altamira, who slammed "useless and inept" governments for years of boom-bust economic crises. The outgoing Peronist government, he said, "had destroyed the country".

BOOM AND BUST
The challenges are huge. Argentina's net foreign currency reserves are estimated at $10 billion in the red, annual inflation is 143% and rising, a recession is around the corner and capital controls skew the exchange rate.
Argentina has gone through boom-bust cycles for decades with money printing to fund regular deficits stoking inflation and weakening the peso. That has worsened in recent years as reserves have dwindled with a major drought earlier this year hitting main cash crops soy and corn.

If not tamed, inflation could reach 15,000% annually, Milei warned in his speech, pledging to "fight tooth and nail" to eradicate it. He also warned about a $100 billion debt "bomb".
The major grains exporter needs to revamp a creaking $44 billion loan program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while Milei needs to navigate ties with important trade partners China and Brazil, whom he criticized during the campaign.
Milei takes over from unpopular outgoing center-left President Fernandez, but will need to negotiate with rivals as his libertarian coalition only has a small bloc in Congress. He has allied with the main conservative grouping.
That has already had an impact. He has moderated his tone in the last few weeks, packed his first Cabinet with mainstream conservatives rather than ideological libertarian allies, and on Sunday he did not mention dollarization in his speeches.

liveLongNprospa:
Damn

CrystalTiger:
The sacrifice that entails #1.5bn new set of cars for a first lady and #5bn yatch abi or is it 48 ministerial cabinet or new cars for NASS abi..

When Javier Milei was sworn in as Argentina’s president on December 10th he told the assembled crowd: “There is no alternative to austerity.” Instead of rosy promises, he warned that tough times lay ahead. Announcing austerity upon taking office is usually political suicide in Argentina. Yet Mr Milei’s sombre message was received with cheers. Fans raised chainsaws into the air, in reference to his promise to cut down the size of the state.

The inaugural address set the tone for the shock therapy to follow. On December 12th Luis Caputo, the new economy minister, unveiled a series of radical economic reforms. H[b]e announced a devaluation of the peso by over 50% (see chart), and promised to slash electricity and transport subsidies, halve the number of government ministries from 18 to nine, suspend public works and reduce federal transfers to Argentina’s 23 provinces. The government reckons these cuts amount to almost 3% of GDP.[/b]


Alongside this, however, the administration will increase taxes on imported goods from 7.5% to 17.5%, and extend a tax of 15% on all exports (an existing tax of 30% on soyabean exports will be maintained). Child benefits will double, as will the value of a government food card for the country’s poorest. The idea is to cut spending while temporarily increasing taxes to raise revenue, in order to lower the annual deficit from over 5% of GDP today to zero by the end of 2024. “We have come to solve the addiction to fiscal deficits,” said Mr Caputo, noting that Argentina has been in the red for 113 of the past 123 years. The IMF, which is owed $43bn by Argentina, applauded the “bold initial actions” and promised to work “expeditiously” with the new government in the coming months. In a statement the fund admitted that the deal it signed in March 2022 with Argentina’s government to restructure its loan had suffered “serious policy setbacks”.

Mauro Roca, the managing director of TCW Group, an asset-management company, says investors are pleased with Mr Milei’s pragmatic turn. The new president rose to fame promising to dollarise the economy and shut down the central bank. Yet since being elected in mid-November, he has put plans for dollarisation on hold and sidelined loyalists. Instead, he has stuffed his cabinet with technocrats from the main centre-right coalition, Together for Change, which held the presidency from 2015 to 2019.

Things may get worse before they get better. In the short term, these measures will lower growth. Given that a cheaper peso, new taxes and fewer subsidies will make living more expensive, there is a chance that prices could rise even higher. Martín Rapetti, a consultant, believes monthly inflation will at least double to around 20% and remain high for several months. But that is far from certain. Mr Milei’s emphasis on fiscal discipline may reassure markets that Argentina is not headed for disaster—if they choose to believe him. That would quickly pull inflation down, rather than push it up.

The confidence of the market “will depend on the degree of social conflict”, says Mr Rapetti. Since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983, all but one non-Peronist president has been booted out of office by protests against economic reforms. Social organisations were quick to respond to Mr Caputo’s announcement. Demonstrations have been called for December 20th.

Mr Milei may also face pushback from his base and from Congress. On the campaign trail he promised to cut taxes and said spending cuts would be paid for by the “caste”, a term he uses to refer to corrupt politicians. Yet taxes will now increase significantly, at least temporarily, and austerity will affect far more than just public workers. His coalition has only 10% of seats in the Senate, and 15% in the lower house. On average since 1983, presidents have commanded the support of 45% of Congress, according to Ana Iparraguirre, a political consultant.

Mr Milei is using his political capital now to pass tough reforms in the hope that the economy will begin to recover by mid-2024. The question is how long the pain will last.

GloriousGbola:
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/02/22/what-javier-milei-could-learn-from-perus-economic-successes


as an aside the irony is that they still jailed fujimori for corruption. i have always admired the man because he was a fking hardass who shut down sendero luminoso and tupac amaru. the tupac amaru stand off was the stuff of hollywood movies. the man succedded on both economy and security

Ibime:
R9 scored more than half his career tally before 22. His career finished at 22 with double ACL injury. Man missed 3.5 seasons of football, made his first appearance after 3.5 years out at the World Cup and scored 8 goals to win the trophy. Greatness.

liveLongNprospa:
Lmao... My big uncle.. This explanation doesn't make up for 400+ goal gap😭

Even if he was fit, that man for nor crack 800

Ibime:
R9 in his first 5 years scored 210 goals, so if he plays 23 years like CR7 injury free and in full fitness, it was possible to hit 1,000. Mind you he had no Messi he was competing with for stats

Ellexy:
She dey crase well we'll, laugh nearly off me.
Her name na Judas 😭
Just coming across her content for the first time
Allow Doc, pidgin na almost the same with Benin.

liveLongNprospa:
Damn

liveLongNprospa:
Damn

monerozi5590:
CR7 is/was better than R9. Way better.

1. Shoot better than R9
2. Heads the ball better than R9. Here the margin is wide.
3. More disciplined than R9.

Summary, CR7 is a more complete footballer than R9.

afrodoc2:
Not that I am debating your conclusion but I think you have to use better points to push your view.

Using those 3 points of shoots better, heads better, more disciplined a mischievous person can say CR7 is/was better than Messi too.

Amigoss:
This is so disrespectful to gaucho,na why our guy go camel league be this,to statpad

monerozi5590:
CR7 has played in England, Spain and Italy. 3 of the major leagues in Europe. Goals goals goals in all of them.

Forget all unverified goals that Pele and some scored. According to IFHSS (International Federation of Football History & Statistics) CR7 is the Greatest Goalscorer of All Time.

raumdeuter:
Obidient madness