Javier Milei is battling to lure foreign businesses back to Argentina, as multinationals hold back from the notoriously unstable country despite enthusiasm for the libertarian president.
Two years into Milei’s term, new investment has been largely confined to the booming natural resources sector. A long-running exodus of foreign groups from Argentina has continued, with HSBC and Carrefour among a dozen major companies announcing their exits under Milei.
Dollar flows from foreign direct investment turned net negative in 2025 for the first time since 2003, according to central bank data. The monetary authority told the Financial Times this was due to foreign companies’ sales to local players and Milei’s easing of currency controls.
While interest in Milei’s stabilisation and deregulation of the economy has drawn dozens of top chief executives to sit-downs with the president, global companies remain wary of the country’s record of macroeconomic volatility and abrupt policy changes.
“Milei’s Argentina isn’t competing with the Argentina of four years ago. It’s competing with many other countries that boards are more comfortable with,” said one executive at a multinational plotting its exit. “We’re excited about Milei, but there’s a lot of history here.”
The most immediate impact of Milei’s success, which has boosted asset prices at the same time as he has loosened capital controls, has been to create an opportunity for companies to sell up without making big losses.
Exxon sold its shale business to Argentina’s Pluspetrol for an estimated $1.7bn in December 2024, while Telefónica announced the sale of its Argentina business to Telecom Argentina for $1.25bn in February.
“Many companies are pulling out of Latin America as part of global restructurings, and Argentina is the first place they leave,” said Dante Sica, founding partner at consultancy Abeceb. “It is one per cent of their billing and 40 per cent of their problems.”
Previous governments have banned companies from repatriating profits or importing supplies, and abruptly capped prices and raised taxes, all while the peso shed 99 per cent of its value over the past decade.
Sica added: “The government has inherited 40 years of investor-spooking behaviour . . . the process of regaining trust is just beginning.”
Argentina’s natural resources sector is the big exception. Rio Tinto, Glencore and other miners have announced plans to invest roughly $25bn in the coming years, drawn by lithium and copper assets that are becoming more valuable during the energy transition.
A long-brewing shale energy boom in Patagonia has drawn Italy’s Eni to invest in a $25bn LNG export terminal with Argentina’s state energy company YPF, while the US’s Continental Resources bought an oilfield in November. OpenAI has said it will spend $25bn on gas-powered data centres in Argentina amid a global investment push.
Milei is hoping the second half of his term will broaden that trend. His big victory at midterm elections in October calmed doubts about political appetite for his free-market agenda and increased his chance of passing long-awaited tax and labour reforms.
In November Argentina secured a limited framework trade deal with the US, its largest direct foreign investor.
The government is accelerating its quest for FDI, planning a debut “Argentina week” investor event in New York in March and weighing an expansion of an investment incentive scheme that has encouraged energy and mining projects.
Milei has appointed Pablo Quirno, his former finance secretary and an ex-JPMorgan director, as foreign minister.
Securing more foreign investment was “extremely important” for Milei’s economic programme, said Ramiro Blazquez Giomi, a strategist at StoneX financial services company.
A severe shortage of hard currency in Argentina’s central bank, which Milei has failed to resolve, has made it harder to prevent currency volatility, repay debts and pay for imports, he added. “FDI is the least volatile source of external financing that the government badly needs.”
The net-negative dollar flows from foreign direct investment in the first 11 months of 2025 were first reported by Argentine news outlet Infobae and were confirmed by the central bank.
Economy minister Luis Caputo has been bullish, telling a conference in November that Milei’s personal brand had elicited “phenomenal interest in investing in Argentina”.
“I would love for you to one day come on a trip with the president and see what he is able to attract,” he said.
Some analysts said 2026 could be a turning point for direct investment, as Milei consolidates political strength and economic reforms. Mining and energy investment will begin to enter central bank coffers.
“Companies are moving from vague interest to asking very concrete questions about sectors like financial services, real estate and retail, which benefit greatly from a more stable macroeconomy,” said Juan Ronderos, founding partner of business consultancy MAP.
Sporting goods chain Decathlon, for example, opened the first of a planned 20 stores in Argentina in November, with $100mn planned over five years.
However, the outlook is much bleaker in Argentina’s manufacturing sector, as Milei’s moves to open the economy leave previously protected sectors unable to compete with imports.
In November, appliance group Whirlpool announced the closure of a plant near Buenos Aires that it had launched in 2022, in part to cope with import restrictions under the previous government.
Other businesses outside the natural resources sector also saw big hurdles, analysts said.
One of the biggest is Milei’s failure to lift all of Argentina’s capital and currency controls. As the government has prioritised propping up the peso, it has been slow to rebuild Argentina’s scarce hard currency reserves.
As a result, it has relaxed rather than eliminated restrictions on dollars moving out of the country, which were first introduced in 2011. Several billion dollars of dividends that companies want to repatriate remain trapped in Argentina.
The central bank has announced it will slightly loosen controls and begin rebuilding reserves from January.
“The reserve level and capital controls are still a big concern for multinationals,” said Kezia McKeague, managing director at Washington-based strategy firm McLarty Associates.
Investment outside of mining and energy would “probably continue to be a trickle rather than a flood” in the next two years ahead of Milei’s planned re-election bid, she added: “But if they can sustain and build on the progress so far, there is a historic opportunity after 2027.”
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