Argentina’s Minister of Labor, Employment, and Social Security Kelly Olmos said on Sunday that it was preferable for Argentina to win the 2022 FIFA World Cup rather than concentrate on vanquishing its out-of-control inflation, giving more importance to a soccer tournament than to the country’s economic policy, at least for the month the tournament lasts.

Analysts are currently predicting that Argentina will end 2022 with an inflation rate slightly above 100 percent.

“We’ll keep working on inflation later, but first let Argentina win,” Olmos said on Sunday in an interview given to Argentina’s El Nueve television channel, where she was given the choice between lowering Argentina’s inflation rate or the country’s potential third World Cup victory.

The remarks apparently bring leftist President Alberto Fernández’s “war on inflation,” declared in March, to an abrupt halt in the name of soccer glory.

Argentina is one of the 32 countries that will be participating in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted in Qatar from November 20 to December 18. The South American nation has won the World Cup twice, in 1978 and 1986, and is aiming to win it a third time in 2022.

“I consider that you have to work all the time on inflation, but one month is not going to make a big difference,” she argued. “On the other hand, from an emotional point of view, of what it means for the men and women of Argentina, we want Argentina to be champion.”

Olmos used the example of Argentina’s first FIFA World Cup victory in 1978, hosted by Argentina under the dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla, to support her claim that the sporting tournament was more important than fiscal policy.

“We were in the military process, they were persecuting us and we didn’t know what was going to happen to each one of us. Argentina came out champion and we all went out to celebrate,” she recalled. “Then we continue with the reality, which is inevitable. But in the middle, if you can celebrate and party, honestly, why avoid it?”

Olmos was appointed as Argentina’s labor minister in October 2022 after her predecessor, Claudio Moroni, resigned due to health reasons.

Argentina has been waging a losing battle against inflation for years that has worsened throughout 2022, heavily affecting Argentine citizens’ purchasing power and greatly decreasing real wages. The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) measured Argentina’s September inflation rate at 6.2 percent. While INDEC is yet to publish October’s inflation rate data, analysts have calculated it to have been 6.5 percent. Analysts from the Argentine Central Bank’s Survey of Market Expectations (REM) have projected that the South American nation will end 2022 with an accumulated inflation rate of 101.5 percent.

The nation’s currency, the Argentine peso, has continuously lost value against the United States dollar throughout the years, with one U.S. dollar being worth 160.70 Argentine pesos as of November 14. The precarious exchange rate situation has left Argentina with a convoluted system that features more than seven different types of exchange rates. Among the newest rates available is an exchange rate named the “Qatar dollar,” in honor of the World Cup, that seeks to make access to foreign exchange more expensive for Argentine citizens that engage in tourism abroad by imposing extra surcharges of up to 25 percent, thus discouraging dollar spending among its citizens.

In March, the nation’s radical leftist president Alberto Fernández declared a “war against inflation” in Argentina that has been mainly centered around price controls and threatening to use the nation’s Supply Law, which grants the Argentine government the ability to intervene in food producing companies, force them to produce a certain amount of products, set prices, and establish profit margins for up to 180 days.

The high inflation rate and growing poverty have prompted protests against the nation’s leftist and Peronist government throughout the year, including protests by the nation’s leftist movements and organizations.

On Friday, the Argentine government presented a new extensive price control program intended to help reduce inflation to four percent per month and reduce the government’s deep fiscal deficit. The “Fair Prices” program freezes the prices of 1,788 different products that range from dairy; cleaning, personal care, and hygiene products; baby items; fresh produce, and beverages for a period of 120 days, until February 2023.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.