The Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, highlighted the progress in financial matters achieved during the G20 meetings in Indonesia which included, among others, the expansion of the currency swap with China which will allow the Central Bank to double its freely available reserves and, thus, guarantee the demand for imports to maintain the level of activity.
“The release of part of the swap in the agreement with China allows Argentina to have 10 billion dollars available to work in the single and exchange-free market. This implies the doubling of unrestricted reserves for the Central Bank that goes from having 5 billion dollars product of the collection of the soybean dollar to 10,000 million,” said Massa in statements to the press.
The minister also highlighted the dialogue maintained with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and with other world leaderswhich allowed sustaining as a common demand the drop in surcharges that is applied to debtor countries and that they mean to Argentina an approximate cost of US$ 1,100 million per year.
“This is also important for the sproductive sectors from Argentina because allows access to the flow of dollars for those that are inputs and imported intermediate goods,” said the head of the Palacio de Hacienda.
Finally, he said that it was also “important” to “have already left the discussion regarding the price of the war with the IMF open and already established that the surcharges will be discussed in December.”
“Argentina is paying the Fund twice the interest rate than, for example, the IDB and that is absurd when the ultimate lender is the Fund,” concluded Massa.
