BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentine passengers in Buenos Aires were hit Friday by an abrupt 360% increase in subway fares, one of the most dramatic price increases in the libertarian movement. President Javier Milei the harsh budget austerity campaign.
After weeks of hearings, an Argentine judge on Thursday revoked an order that temporarily blocked a scheduled increase in subway fares. That paved the way for the change to take effect Friday morning as office workers in Buenos Aires passed through the turnstiles of South America’s oldest underground metro.
Public transport fares are a sensitive issue across Latin America, where inequality is deeply rooted and outrage sparked by metro price hikes has sparked social unrest in the past. like the mass protests in Chile in 2019.
Overnight, the price of a single trip in Buenos Aires more than tripled, going from 125 pesos (14 cents) to 574 pesos (64 cents), exacerbating a painful cost-of-living crisis in Argentina.
President Milei is reducing public spending on everything from subsidies to state companies as part of a radical free market experiment aiming to rebuild the country’s credibility with foreign investors and tame hyperinflation.
But, at least in the short term, your deregulation and austerity measures boosted inflation – now at 289% per year, one of the highest rates in the world – and made life more difficult for ordinary Argentines as the economy enters recession.
It is the third time this year that inflationary spikes have hit subway fares – just 80 pesos last December – while Milei cuts federal subsidies for public transportation, forcing municipal governments to increase costs. Bus and train prices in the sprawling city of Buenos Aires have also increased steadily, although not in a single price increase like what happened with the metro.
Buenos Aires municipal authorities said fares would reach 650 pesos (73 cents) on June 1, but that they would postpone another price increase to 757 pesos until August 1, “with the aim of minimizing the impact on passengers’ pockets.” .
The low fares have been a boon for residents, especially those leaving central Buenos Aires and traveling long distances to work. But cheap tariffs — like other subsidies for basic goods — also constitute a large and growing cost that the heavily indebted government says it cannot afford in the midst of Argentina’s worst financial crisis in two decades.
Buenos Aires’ underground transit system – one of the first to be built in the world – was once a poignant symbol of the city’s lavish wealth in the early 20th century. But in recent decades it has fallen into disuse.
