Financial analysts said on Wednesday that Argentina ran a trade surplus for the tenth month in a row under libertarian President Javier Milei in September, bringing the South American nation close to a $16 billion surplus since he took office.
September’s surplus was about $1.28 billion, led by growth in the farming, mining, shale oil, and natural gas industries. Argentina is also starting to make money with lithium, the vital ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles (EVs).
Economist Pablo Besmedrisnik told Reuters that Argentina’s greatly increased energy production was helping to drive export growth.
“The energy sector will end 2024 with a positive result of around $4.2 to $5 billion, mainly due to higher local production of hydrocarbons and the lower level of activity that demands less energy,” he said.
Trade with Brazil was especially brisk in September, surging by 27 percent year-on-year to reach a $2.73 billion surplus. Argentina’s purchases of big-ticket consumer products from Brazil, such as passenger and commercial vehicles, also posted healthy growth as Argentinians found themselves with money to spend.
Argentina ran sizable trade deficits for most of the year before Milei took office, although its agricultural industry was known to produce decent surplus totals before that.
In April, Milei announced Argentina’s first budget surplus in 16 years. The surplus was $309 million, which was only about 0.2 percent of Argentina’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but Milei hailed it as a “feat of historic significance on the global scale,” given what the balance sheet looked like under his predecessors.