As central bank president from 2002 to 2004, Prat-Gay halted a surge in inflation following the debt default and currency devaluation and helped spark a recovery from Argentina’s worst recession on record.
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With 98 per cent of the vote counted, Mr Macri, 56, had 51.5 per cent support compared with 48.5 per cent for ruling party candidate Daniel Scioli, President Cristina Fernandez’s handpicked successor.
Argentina’s president-elect Mauricio Macri has named US-educated bankers and executives to key posts in a cabinet he vows will revive the economy, media reported Wednesday.
Macri, fresh off his historic election win late Sunday, began laying out how he would achieve some of the promises that helped him put an end to 12 years of “Kirchnerismo”, a movement aligned with the poor led by Fernandez and her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner. “We have to build an Argentina with zero poverty, we have to confront the drug smuggling”, he said.
Macri has not only promised to make it easier for foreign companies to do business in Argentina, but he has said he will make an effort to improve foreign relations with the Unites States as well.
Although Mr. Macri’s thin margin of victory, about three percentage points, means that he will have constraints on what he can do, his election is still significant since it will likely mean change for Argentina’s economic and foreign policies.
The president elect has vowed to liberalize the economy, lifting outgoing President Cristina Fernandez restrictions on imports and United States dollar transactions. He also has said he plans to implement several harsh or unpopular measures, such as cuts in public spending and higher prices for public services.
Analysts also cautioned that Macri may struggle to get his reforms past hostile lawmakers.
“We want to build good relations with all of Latin America and with the world”, he said.
Macri’s supporters swarmed around the iconic Obelisk in the heart of Buenos Aires’s theater district as passing cars blared their horns in celebration.
Macri has been particularly criticized for his indirect ties to the last military dictatorship in Argentina in the late 1970s and early 1980s that cracked down on left-wing activists and political opposition.
Conceding defeat on Sunday, Mr Scioli said: “The people have chosen an alternative”.
Macri said he will overturn Kirchner’s tight control of monetary policy.
He forecast that if Macri tightens fiscal and monetary policy, Argentina will fall into recession next year before recovering to growth of at least 3.0 percent by 2018.
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“We would have liked to have had a better understanding of how things stand before December 10”.
