POVERTY levels in Argentina skyrocketed to 57.4 per cent of the country’s 46 million people in January, the highest rate in 20 years, according to a new study.

The findings in a study by the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA) prompted accusations between Argentina’s former vice-president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and the government of President Javier Milei, who came to power in December last year announcing a fire-sale of public assets and sweeping attacks on pensions and workers’ rights.

About 27 million people in Argentina are poor and 15 per cent of those are mired in destitution, meaning they cannot adequately cover their food needs, according to the study released over the weekend.

The UCA’s social debt observatory is considered an independent and prestigious research institution whose reports on poverty cover a larger geographical area than those conducted by Argentina’s national statistics agency, INDEC. 

According to the centre’s latest report, the increase in poverty levels in January was partly due to the devaluation of the Argentine peso applied by Mr Milei’s government shortly after taking office on December 10.

Ms de Kirchner, who also governed between 2007 and 2015, attributed the poverty problem largely to conservative president Mauricio Macri, who succeeded her in office in 2015, and to the adjustments applied by the current administration.

She said that, starting in 2018, “with a debt in dollars and the return of the IMF, we went backwards.”

The reality presented by the study, Ms de Kirchner said, “shows that today we are worse off than in 2004.”

The government told Ms Kirchner to “be silent.”

Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said during his daily press conference on Monday that the former president is “one of the most relevant figures in the last 20 years of Argentina’s decline.”