Since Javier Milei won the elections in Argentina (November 2023), the South American country and its radical economic policies have been in the spotlight. But between numbers and statistics, it’s easy to lose track. With Datastory, we’ll try to make sense of it all.

At the heart of what’s happening in Argentina lies a single figure, a statistic that alone explains Milei’s political rise, and that will also determine the success or failure of his government: the consumer price index, better known as inflation.

A Long History of Chronic Inflation

Argentinian inflation is almost a national institution. No other major country has lived so long with a currency that continuously loses value. To give you an idea: since 1969, the Argentine government has removed 13 zeros from the peso, in a desperate attempt to keep the currency “usable.”

Today, a coffee in Buenos Aires costs about 2,000 pesos (1.5 euros). If those zeros hadn’t been removed, that same coffee would cost a staggering 20,000,000,000,000,000 pesos, that’s 20 quadrillion, or 20 million billion pesos!

Inflation Out of Control

To find a “normal” inflation rate in Argentina, let’s say below 10% annually, you’d have to go back at least fifteen years. Since then, the country has consistently experienced double-digit annual inflation. Under the previous government, the annual inflation rates were:

  • 36% in 2020
  • 51% in 2021
  • 95% in 2022
  • 211% in 2023

In December 2023, the last month of the previous administration, monthly inflation peaked at 25.5%. In Argentina, people often focus on monthly inflation, because with such high rates, annual figures almost lose meaning: a 25.5% price increase in just one month translates to an annual inflation of about 1,400%, meaning prices multiply by 14 in a year. Put differently: a coffee costing 1.5 euros today would cost 21 euros in a year, and almost 300 euros the year after.

Milei’s Brakes on Inflation

With rigor and determination, Milei’s government managed to bring monthly inflation down from 25.5% in December 2023 to 1.5% in May 2025 and 1.6% in June 2025 — levels not seen since 2017, aside from a couple of anomalous months during the Covid lockdown.

This is undoubtedly a success, but it’s still far from normalization. The annual inflation rate over the last 12 months (July 2024 – June 2025) is still 39%. Even assuming a stable monthly inflation of 1.5%, this would still translate to about 20% annually — levels that would represent an all-time record in Italy, even surpassing the worst inflationary crises of the 1970s and 1980s.

How Inflation is Measured in Argentina

Inflation calculations are handled by INDEC, the Argentine National Institute of Statistics, which, like other national institutes, builds a basket of about 1,000 goods and services representing the typical consumption of an average family. Every month, INDEC tracks price changes across thousands of sales points and calculates the weighted average increase.

However, Argentina has a poor reputation when it comes to inflation statistics. In the past, governments manipulated official data to conceal the true extent of the currency’s loss of purchasing power. To avoid any such suspicion, Milei decided to confirm Marco Lavagna as head of INDEC, even though he had been appointed by the previous Peronist government. This was a strategic and symbolic choice, since Lavagna is politically aligned with the opposition, being the son of a former Economy Minister and a former national deputy close to Sergio Massa, the controversial Economy Minister under the previous government and Milei’s main opponent in the last presidential election.

Additionally, to avoid disputes over the methodology, Milei’s government decided not to update the consumption basket, which is now over ten years old. Many experts call for an update to better reflect current consumption habits, but the government has chosen to keep it unchanged to preserve the historical series and clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of its anti-inflation policy.

There is still much more to say: the deeper causes of this inflation spiral, its impact on poverty, savings, investment, and citizens’ trust. And of course, what Milei’s government is concretely doing to break a vicious cycle that has plagued Argentina for decades.

We’ll explore all this in future articles.