Argentina's RIGI solves the wrong risk for power investors
In September 2025, CAMMESA paid renewable generators roughly 40% of what it owed them, because the FODER trust that backstops RenovAr and MATER contracts had not received the government transfer it needed, per La Política Online's reporting on the shortfall. That is the risk large-ticket power capital is walking into Argentina right now, and it is not the risk RIGI was built to fix.
Régimen de Incentivo para Grandes Inversiones freezes the rules. Thirty years of tax stability, customs relief, and guaranteed access to FX for projects clearing a $200 million minimum ticket, per the government's own RIGI framework. A 180 MW wind project in Buenos Aires province and a solar park in Mendoza have already adhered. That is real capital, and it is coming for a reason: a future government cannot suddenly retax or reclassify the project once it is inside the regime.
None of that addresses whether the counterparty writing the check has the cash on the day the invoice is due.
Two different risks, one regime
Regulatory stability and payment risk are not the same exposure, and RIGI only underwrites the first one. A generator selling into CAMMESA, whether through a legacy RenovAr PPA or a MATER private contract that still clears through the wholesale market, is exposed to the solvency of the system that pays it. FODER exists precisely because that solvency has been shaky enough that renewable generators needed a dedicated trust fund sitting between them and the treasury's own cash position. When the treasury does not fund the trust, the trust does not pay the generator, RIGI protection or not.
This is not a new problem dressed up in new language. It is the same distinction we've written about elsewhere in the region: a contract's face value and what a system operator or offtaker actually settles are different numbers, and debt sized against the face value is debt sized against an assumption. RIGI removes the risk that Argentina changes its mind about your tax treatment. It does not remove the risk that CAMMESA's cash position wobbles again next year, or the year after that.
A thirty-year tax freeze is worth very little to a lender modeling a payment gap eighteen months from financial close.
Where the real hedge is coming from
The more interesting development sits outside RIGI entirely. Energy delivered under MATER's private contract structure grew from 4,129 GWh in 2022 to 7,443 GWh in 2024, roughly an 80% increase, per industry reporting on the program's growth. That is capacity moving toward corporate offtakers who settle bilaterally rather than through the CAMMESA-FODER chain, or at least reducing the share of exposure that runs through it. It is the same instinct we would apply anywhere in the region: when a public payment mechanism shows strain, the market response is to route around it, not to wait for it to be fixed.
The honest caveat is that MATER contracts still dispatch through the same grid CAMMESA operates, and a private offtaker's own credit can be just as thin as the trust fund's. Routing around FODER trades one counterparty risk for another; it does not make counterparty risk disappear. Anyone underwriting a MATER deal should be doing the same credit work on the corporate offtaker that a lender would do on any single-counterparty PPA, not treating "private" as a synonym for "safe."
What we think follows
Debt sized against a RIGI-protected project's contracted revenue should carry a payment-timing reserve sized off CAMMESA's actual settlement history, not off the tax and customs guarantees in the RIGI paperwork. Those guarantees are real and they matter for the twenty-year view. They tell a lender nothing about month fourteen of operations, which is when a cash-strapped system administrator's transfer delays actually show up on a debt service account.
A reasonable counterargument: capital chasing RIGI is disproportionately large-ticket, well-capitalized sponsors who can absorb a few months of payment slippage without breaching covenants, which is a different risk profile than a thinly capitalized single-asset developer. That is fair, and it is exactly why RIGI is attracting the sponsors it is attracting. It does not mean the underlying payment mechanism has gotten any more reliable for the smaller platforms trying to finance behind it.
Our own pipeline sits in Peru, not Argentina, where the offtake question runs through a different set of institutions entirely. The discipline transfers regardless: know exactly which entity settles the invoice, and underwrite that entity's solvency separately from whatever regulatory comfort the state has offered around it.
The open question
Does RIGI capital end up pulling enough of Argentina's power sector into private, dollarized, bilaterally settled contracts that CAMMESA's own solvency stops being the binding constraint on financeability, the way MATER's growth suggests it might? Or does everything of scale still clear through CAMMESA one way or another, in which case the FODER shortfall that hit generators in September 2025 is a preview rather than an anomaly. I don't think the data yet says which.
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