The Minister of Economy, Silvina Batakis, met this Monday with David Lipton, the right-hand man of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Janet Yellen, and a team of officials dedicated to the region, at the headquarters of the Treasury Department, where He explained the economic and fiscal challenges that Argentina faces in the external context.
Batakis entered accompanied by the Argentine ambassador to the United States, Jorge Argüello, and the Vice Minister of Economy and Secretary of Economic Policy, Karina Angeletti, the only member of the Argentine delegation that traveled from Buenos Aires.
On the United States side, in addition to Lipton, the Undersecretary for Institutional Relations, Andy Baukol, and the Deputy Undersecretary for the Western Hemisphere and South Asia, Michael Kaplan, were also part of the meeting.
“In the meeting, which had a cordial tone and lasted an hour, the minister made a personal presentation and fulfilled the objective of her visit to Washington, so that the minister is known and heard, both in the Treasury, as well as in the IMF and in the World Bank,” Argüello emphasized, in a conversation with Télam about the end of the day, as a balance of the meetings.
As it turned out, Lipton was interested in hearing “one by one the eleven fiscal measures proposed by the Minister of Economy, when she took office, and she answered with ease and solvency on how she was going to comply with each measure,” a source explained to Télam. who participated in the meeting.
“There was a lot of interest and attention from Lipton and his team,” another source narrowed it down.
Lipton was Deputy Managing Director of the IMF and the team that put together the program signed by former President Mauricio Macri. He also participated in the negotiations with the former Minister of the Economy, Martín Guzmán, to refinance the US$45 billion of debt inherited from the previous management and whose agreement was signed at the end of March 2022.
This agreement was signed before the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, which changed the supply matrix of raw materials and prices, which impacted the calculations of inflation and growth for the world economy and for Argentina..
Regarding the progress of the agreement with the IMF, it gave free rein to the first revision and the payment of US$4.1 billion, which allowed the maturities with the IMF to be canceled.
It is expected that in September, the Government will also pass the second review, which will trigger another disbursement, according to the results achieved up to June.
Batakis, in this context, will go through these months seeking to gain credibility with results in the second half, with the eleven fiscal measures that he exposed as soon as he assumed.
After the meeting with Lipton, Batakis went to the IMF headquarters where he had a bilateral meeting with the agency’s managing director, Kristalina Georgievaand a technical work meeting with the team from the Argentine embassy, and accompanied by Angeletti.
Later, after 3 hours, went to the headquarters of the World Bank, where the director of Operations of the entity, Axel Van Trotsenburg, informed him that the board approved a financing of 200 million dollars, to promote sustainable growth in Argentinadriven by innovation and focused on the creation of productive technology-based companies, support for entrepreneurs and access to private capital.
