Argentine President Javier Milei has announced plans to fire 70,000 government workers soon, demonstrating his "chainsaw-style" approach to drastically reduce the size of the state, as reported by Bloomberg.

During an event on March 26, Milei announced his plans to stop public projects, cut funding to provincial governments, and end more than 200,000 social welfare initiatives, which he deemed corrupt. These steps are part of the libertarian leader's approach to attain financial balance by any means possible this year.

While the planned job cuts are just a small portion of Argentina's 3.5 million public sector employees, Milei may face opposition from influential labour unions. This action also jeopardises his strong public support. One union has already started a strike on March 26, and a government report highlighted the considerable decrease in wages for private sector workers since Milei took office in December.

The leader of the state workers union, ATE, swiftly announced a national strike on social media site X (formerly known as Twitter), in response to Milei's plans, although details were not provided.

Milei referenced polls indicating a rising optimism among Argentinians about the future of the economy. Despite implementing austerity measures, a recent indicator revealed a boost in public confidence towards the government. “People have hope, they’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel," Milei concluded.

During his speech, Milei affirmed that peso futures contracts are in line with the central bank's 2% monthly crawling peg scheme, dismissing calls for a significant devaluation of the currency as "ridiculous."

He also mentioned that the Argentine central bank is making progress towards achieving net neutral reserves. In December, it began with debt liabilities surpassing available cash by $11.5 billion.

Milei also expressed his commitment to intensify economic reforms post 2025 congressional elections, with over 3,000 reforms in the pipeline.

He described the Senate rejecting his emergency decree as “marvellous” because “it left all the dirty fingers” of exposed politicians he calls “delinquents”.

Image source: Livemint