page_title: Economic history of Argentina
section_title: Fernandez administration
hierarchical_section_title: Economic history of Argentina / Return to growth (2003 - 2015) / Fernandez administration
caption_attribution_description: Español: La presidenta Cristina Fernández observa una pantalla con anteojos 3D, durante su recorrida por la nueva planta de Newsan, en Ushuaia. La acompañan el titular de la compañía, Rubén Cherñajovsky, la gobernadora de Tierra del Fuego, Fabiana Ríos, y una trabajadora de la fábrica.
context_page_description: The economic history of Argentina is one of the most studied, owing to the "Argentine paradox", its unique condition as a country that had achieved advanced development in the early 20th century but experienced a reversal, which inspired an enormous wealth of literature and diverse analysis on the causes of this decline. Since independence from Spain in 1816, the country has defaulted on its debt nine times and inflation has often been in the double digits, even as high as 5000%, resulting in several large currency devaluations.
  Argentina possesses definite comparative advantages in agriculture, as the country is endowed with a vast amount of highly fertile land. Between 1860 and 1930, exploitation of the rich land of the pampas strongly pushed economic growth. During the first three decades of the 20th century, Argentina outgrew Canada and Australia in population, total income, and per capita income. By 1913, Argentina was the world's 10th wealthiest state per capita.
  Beginning in the 1930s, however, the Argentine economy deteriorated notably.
context_section_description: In December 10, 2007, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became president. In 2008 the rural sector mobilized against a resolution that would have increased the export tax rate on soybean exports from 35% to 44.1%. Ultimately, the new taxation regime was abandoned. Official Argentine statistics are believed to have significantly underreported inflation since 2007, and independent economists publishing their own estimates of Argentine inflation have been threatened with fines and prosecution.
  In October 2008 President Fernández de Kirchner nationalised private pension funds for almost $30 billion, ostensibly to protect the pensions from falling stock prices around the world, although critics said the government simply wanted to add the money to its budget. Private pension funds, which were first licensed in 1994, suffered large losses during the 1998–2002 crisis and by 2008, the state subsidized 77% of the funds' beneficiaries.
  The late-2000s recession hit the country in 2009 with GDP growth slowing to 0.8%. High GDP growth resumed in 2010, and the economy expanded by 8.5%. In April 2010, Economy Minister Amado Boudou prepared a debt swap package for the holders of over US$18 billion in bonds who did not participate in the 2005 Argentine debt restructuring. In late 2010, the largest new natural gas deposits in 35 years were discovered in Neuquén Province. The unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2011 was 7.3%.
  In November 2011, the government laid a plan to cut utilities subsidies to higher income households. By mid-2011, credit was outpacing GDP by a wide margin, raising concerns that the economy was overheating. Argentina began a period of fiscal austerity in 2012. In April 2012, the government announced plans to expropriate YPF, despite the opposition of some energy experts, claiming that YPF's Spanish partner and major holder, Repsol, had not done his duty as to provide the financial support for research and land exploitation, as well as being a bad administrator concerned only in sending profits to Spain and forsaking YPF's economic growth.
  Rising inflation and capital flight caused a rapid depletion of the country's dollar reserves, prompting the government to severely curtail access to dollars in June 2012. The imposition of capital controls, in turn, led to the emergence of a black market for dollars, known as the "dólar blue", at higher rates than the official exchange rate.
  By May 2014, private forecasts estimated annual inflation at 39.9%, one of the highest rates in the world. In July 2014, a ruling from a New York court ordered the country to pay the remaining holders of the bonds defaulted in 2001, which by then were mostly American Vulture funds, before it paid any of its exchange bondholders. The Argentine government refused, causing the country to default on its debt again.
caption: President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner inaugurating a factory in Ushuaia. Firms like Blackberry, HP and Motorola have set up plants in Tierra del Fuego, drawn by tax breaks.[145]
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