Argentina 2024: Milei, inflation and horse market

The Argentine Open final was played under the watchful eye of President Javier Milei, who is clearly very popular in the Argentine polo world. True to his slightly… offbeat image, Milei didn’t deprive his audience of the kind of show he’s known for, combining exuberance and rather pleasant gestures: warm hugs with the players, including of course Cambiaso, of whom he’s a fan, during the prize-giving ceremony, where he clearly enjoyed lingering. All this under the worried gaze of sixty members of his security team, including a few snipers posted high up in the stands, it seems.

Clearly, Dr Javier Milei, the embodiment of hard-line liberalism, has turned Argentina’s economy around, wiping out the country’s debt. On the other hand, the poverty rate is no better than it was during the Kirchner Peronist era, rising from 44% to 53% of the population living below the poverty line. The only fly in the ointment.

He has also brought inflation under control, from 13% a month to less than 3% a month… after a surge of 25% the days after his election at the end of 2023. As a result, the cost of living in Argentina is now equivalent to that in Europe. For travelers, the bargains of the days when you could exchange euros and dollars at the “blue” rate on a parallel market with a 50% bonus on the official rate are over. The peso has stabilized, but at what price? Whereas in 2001, 100 pesos were equivalent to 100 dollars, today you need a big bag to carry the 100,000 pesos corresponding to the same sum (bearing in mind that the most common banknotes are 500 and 1,000 pesos and that very few new 10,000 peso banknotes- €10 – are in circulation).

These original 25% inflation figures have prompted several European polo players and aficionados to think again. Many have written off their travels. The fact that there were only four teams in the Women’s Open was largely due to costs. The stands at Palermo’s “Cathedral” were virtually empty for the quarterfinals (the “popular” Dorego stand was a little fuller, as it was free to enter for the first time this year), they were half-empty for the semi-finals and not really full for the final. Just ten years ago, tickets were snapped up as early as the quarters. The polo horse trade, although still fairly active, has clearly slowed down: “When you were offered horses for $50,000 at the beginning of the season, the sellers would call back at the end of the season, before everyone had left, to offer them for $20,000 for fear of having them on their hands during the winter”, confided one European professional player. Maintenance costs have also skyrocketed: “Last year, my stable of around thirty horses cost me around $50,000. This year, I had to spend $150,000 for those same thirty horses”, revealed the father of a professional player. Because, of course, professional polo players count in the dollars they earn in tournaments abroad. And in this case, Javier Milei’s economic policy has clearly not done them any favors. But they love him!