The protests were allegedly organised to pressure the government into doling out more money and food, part of which never found its way to the intended recipients.
Milei is seeking to eliminate the practice of using NGOs and political parties as intermediaries to deliver state aid and end what he calls “the business of poverty”.
On Monday, a judge granted a request brought by aid organisations, ordering the government to provide a detailed breakdown of the food being withheld, and to proceed with distributing it “immediately”.
The judge cited the vast number of Argentines “acutely suffering from food insecurity”. According to official figures, about 50 per cent of inhabitants of the South American country live in poverty.
Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on Monday the government would appeal the court order. The food, he said, was being stored “for emergencies or catastrophes”.
According to social organisations, there are about 45,000 soup kitchens in Argentina.
Cabinet chief Nicolas Posse, in a recent presentation to Congress, said preliminary audit results had revealed that almost 50 per cent of soup kitchens that had been receiving aid “do not exist.”
Cut off by the government, some continue operating today thanks to private donations.
The ultraliberal president will meet “the owners of four of the top 10 companies by market capitalisation in the world in this bid to reposition Argentina globally,” Adorni told reporters.
It is Milei’s seventh trip overall since December, and comes in a week the Senate will be debating his budget-slashing and liberalising economic reform package.
On his way home after his trip to Silicon Valley and Stanford University, the self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” president will attend the swearing-in Friday of El Salvador’s gang-busting leader Nayib Bukele, reelected with a large majority in February.
Milei has slashed public spending, cut the cabinet in half, done away with tens of thousands of government jobs, suspended new public works contracts and ripped away fuel and transport subsidies since taking office.
While inflation has been slowing, it is still at nearly 290 per cent year-on-year, while manufacturing output has plummeted.