Argentina
The 2026 Budget Fell Short of Official Inflation and Growth Targets
The Government must send Congress the 2027 Budget bill with promises of improvement in key variables. According to BAE Negocios, the most recent precedent showed significant gaps between official projections and the economy’s actual performance.
The Government will send the 2027 Budget bill to Congress this Tuesday, a step that will open the legislative debate on next year’s economic plan. According to BAE Negocios, in July the Executive Branch had already submitted the Progress Report, where it anticipated a favorable outlook for the 2027-2029 period, with expectations of GDP growth, a recovery in consumption, lower inflation, improvement in real wages and household disposable income, falling unemployment, job creation and an improvement in social indicators.
According to BAE Negocios, the consultancy Epyca said at the time that the report functioned more as a statement of intent than as an accountability exercise, and stressed that the Government did not explain concrete mechanisms that would make those projections credible.
The closest precedent is the 2026 Budget, the first approved during the current administration. According to BAE Negocios, that text had estimated annual inflation at 10.1%, but in the first eight months of 2026 the National CPI from Indec had already accumulated 21.3%. In addition, the projections from banks and consultancies surveyed in the REM point to the index ending December at around 30%.
The same outlet indicated that the improvement in real wages and household income set out in the 2027 Budget progress report depends on disinflation continuing. However, it said that process appears to have stalled, with a year-on-year variation above 30% and monthly inflation that has still not managed to fall below 1.5%.
There were also differences between what was projected and what was observed in terms of activity. BAE Negocios recalled that the 2026 Budget had forecast average year-on-year GDP growth of 5%, but the first half of the year ended with cumulative growth of 1.9%, while the BCRA’s REM estimated 2.1% for the full year.
Sources
About this note. Written by El Notero with assistance from artificial intelligence, based on what was published by the cited outlet. El Notero did not conduct its own reporting on this event.
