An IMGlobalWealth.com News Report
Argentina has taken a formal step towards launching its first Citizenship-by-Investment (CBI) programme with the publication of an international tender to appoint a master agent responsible for designing, implementing, and operating the scheme.
According to the official tender (Pliego No. 34-0001-CPU25) issued by the Ministry of Economy, the selected consultancy will receive a four-year mandate to build the programme’s complete operational structure. This includes preparing procedural manuals, defining investment categories, establishing application processes, developing an international positioning strategy, and building the digital systems required for application intake and evaluation.
The programme will be administered by the Agencia de Programas de Ciudadanía por Inversión (APCI), a decentralised body created under Decree 366/2025 and regulated by Decree 524/2025. APCI will assess applications and issue formal recommendation reports prior to approval by the competent authorities.
Payment to the master agent will be strictly performance-based. Under the tender’s terms, the contractor will be compensated only for approved applications submitted through certified third-party agents, with self-sourced applications explicitly excluded from government payment. Compensation is structured into five tranches covering up to 5,000 favourable recommendation reports. The tender further sets out milestone obligations, financial solvency requirements, technical scoring criteria, and termination conditions. Importantly, no minimum investment thresholds or eligible sectors are defined in the tender or the underlying decrees; these will be determined during programme development.
Transparency note: At the time of publication, IMGlobalWealth.com was unable to locate the tender documentation on a publicly accessible Argentine government procurement portal. This analysis is based on an official pliego document circulated through industry channels and cross-checked against Decrees 366/2025 and 524/2025, as published on the Government of Argentina’s Boletín Oficial and the Ministry of Economy’s official communications.
Argentina’s Political and Socio-Economic Backdrop
The tender is being issued during a period of significant political and economic transition in Argentina. President Javier Milei, elected in 2023, has positioned himself as a close ideological ally of US President Donald Trump, with international reporting frequently highlighting alignment between the two administrations on economic and geopolitical themes. Milei’s government has embarked on an ambitious programme of deregulation, fiscal tightening, and institutional restructuring, aiming to stabilise an economy that has experienced repeated cycles of inflation, recession, and policy volatility.
Argentina remains a large upper-middle-income economy emerging from a prolonged downturn. GDP per capita in 2024 stood at approximately US$13,800, unemployment has ranged between 7% and 8% in 2025, and poverty levels – which exceeded 50% in early 2024 – declined later in the year as inflation began to ease. The country performs comparatively well on human-development metrics: Argentina ranks around 47th globally on the UN Human Development Index, placing it within the “very high” development tier. However, public perceptions of safety remain a concern, with crime-perception indices categorising the environment as “high”, even though the national homicide rate remains moderate relative to the wider region.
This mixed context – a combination of institutional stress, economic recalibration, and high human-development indicators – forms the landscape in which Argentina is seeking to attract foreign capital through a structured citizenship-by-investment mechanism.
Earlier Reporting by IMGlobalWealth.com
IMGlobalWealth.com has followed Argentina’s evolving citizenship strategy closely. In May 2025, the article Open for Investors, Closed to Migrants: Argentina’s Dual Citizenship Strategy examined the early signals that Buenos Aires was considering an investment-linked naturalisation pathway designed to attract capital rather than migration.
Later, in July 2025, IMGW published Argentina’s $500K Passport Gambit: Luring Capital to Escape Economic Freefall, analysing the government’s early positioning as it explored alternative channels for economic stabilisation.
The publication of the official tender now confirms the direction anticipated in those earlier reports and marks Argentina’s transition from policy intention to formal programme development.
Significance and Next Steps
With the issuance of Tender No. 34-0001-CPU25, Argentina has moved decisively from signalling openness to foreign investment towards formalising the design of a CBI programme. The absence of preset investment thresholds or sectoral definitions indicates that detailed programme architecture will now be shaped in partnership between APCI and the appointed consultancy.
IMGlobalWealth.com will continue monitoring APCI announcements, procurement developments, and forthcoming regulatory publications, including due-diligence procedures, investment requirements, and expected timelines for programme launch.
