Macri’s win ends a political era dominated by Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her late-husband Nestor Kirchner.
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Macri, who won by just three points over ruling party rival Daniel Scioli, is expected to negotiate a settlement with the creditors and to pivot back toward pro-market policies.
Candidate Mauricio Macri had promised to revitalize Argentina’s rather sagging economy.
Neither candidate achieved the 45 percent of votes needed to avoid a runoff in the first round of the election held in October.
Speaking at the NH Hotel in central Buenos Aires, Scioli accepted defeat shortly after 9.30pm, saying that he had called Macri to congratulate him on his victory.
Macri’s even met with Bill Clinton, who presided over the last spell of good relations between the two countries.
As budget minister he reportedly named Alfonso Prat-Gay, 50, a US-trained economist who worked from 1994 for J.P. Morgan (Other OTC: MGHL – news) in London and NY and later served as president of Argentina’s Central Bank.
Macri, 56, has pledged to lift unpopular controls on the purchase of US dollars and thus eliminate a booming black market for currency exchange. “Thank you all so much for believe that together we can build the Argentina of our dreams”. He also promises to move swiftly to dismantle the web of capital controls and trade restrictions. As only the third non-Peronist leader since the end of military rule in 1983, he will have tough negotiating ahead, as the Peronists have the majority in Argentina’s Congress and Senate.
BUENOS AIRES Nov 25 American Airlines has stopped accepting Argentine pesos to pay for tickets due to currency controls that make it hard to convert receipts into USA dollars, local media and one of the airline’s sales agents said on Wednesday.
In his inaugural press conference as president-elect, Macri said he plans to seek Venezuela’s suspension from South America’s Mercosur trade bloc because of accusations of rights abuses by President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government.
“The economy has basically been paralyzed for the past four years due to many reasons, some of them external and some of them having to do with the economic policies that the Kirchener government has taken”, she says.
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“Argentina today doesn’t have credible information on the economy”, said Macri, criticizing the Fernandez administration for widely discredited statistics on everything from inflation to poverty rates.
