<h6><strong>The Diplomat</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Argentine Minister of Deregulation and State Transformation, Federico Sturzenegger, highlighted the business and investment opportunities in his country this Monday in Madrid, emphasizing “economic and bureaucratic freedom so that companies can develop their businesses in Argentina without the interference of a cumbersome and slow state.”</strong></h4> Sturzenegger made these remarks during his participation in the business meeting ‘Spain-Argentina: Review of the First Two Years of the Milei Presidency,’ organized by the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), the State Secretariat for Trade, through ICEX Spain Export and Investment, and the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, in collaboration with the Argentine Embassy in Spain, at the Confederation's headquarters in Madrid. According to the minister, Argentina is undergoing a profound transformation process, "endorsed" by Argentine society in the legislative elections of October 26. He emphasized that one of the main priorities of President Javier Milei and his team is to respect fiscal balance in all areas, as this implies reducing government spending and, therefore, taxes. He also defended the importance of moving toward "economic and bureaucratic freedom so that companies can develop their businesses in Argentina without the interference of a cumbersome and slow state that, far from helping people, complicates their lives." He asserted that, from a business perspective, this deregulation primarily benefits SMEs, which dominate the Argentine business landscape. For all these reasons, and based on these two main pillars and in conjunction with the RIGI (Incentive Regime for Large Investments), Sturzenegger asserted that foreign companies will feel more attracted to investing in Argentina in strategic sectors such as energy, mining, agribusiness, and the knowledge economy. Regarding Spain, he emphasized that Argentina is making the necessary changes to restore Spanish businesses' confidence in Argentina as a prosperous place to invest and conduct their economic activities. During the opening of the event, the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, highlighted the significant Spanish business presence in Argentina in strategic sectors such as telecommunications, financial services, agribusiness, metallurgy, and automotive, and noted that more than 200 Spanish companies currently operate in the country, many of them SMEs. For his part, the Argentine ambassador to Spain, Wenceslao Bunge, assured that the country is in a new stage of transformation, with the capacity to fully integrate into the international arena and to offer a stable and predictable framework to investors.
