The new Economy Minister, Silvina Batakis, said that “surely there will be some modifications” in the next reviews of the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), because “the second semester is very complex” with “many” and “very strong” maturities. She also reaffirmed that the purpose of the Government is “not only to recover what was lost (in real terms) but also to gain” purchasing power.
“We have to be realistic and honest: tensions are going to exist, but we have to work together”since the agreement “we have to fulfill it”, expressed the replacement of Martín Guzmán in dialogue with the station El Destape Radio.
In relation to debt negotiations, The Ministry of Economy seeks to agree on a new meeting date with the Paris Club, originally scheduled for this Wednesday, but which had to be postponed after the resignation of Martín Guzmán.
Batakis stressed the purpose of “coordinating” the work with “all the organizations” in the economic area and indicated that, with the Minister of Productive Development, Daniel Scioli, and the President of the Central Bank, Miguel Pesce, they are trying to “have a Route”.
Batakis assured that the purpose of the Government is “not only to recover what was lost but also to gain” purchasing power.
This coordinated work, he added, will allow “avoid jumps in the economy that affect companies, but also people who are scared by these changes”.
“This Tuesday morning I started talking to him (for Pesce) and on Monday I had a very good meeting with the Minister of Productive Development,” he reported.
The minister also stated that “wages are not the cause of inflation” and reaffirmed that the purpose of the Government is “not only to recover what was lost (in real terms) but also to gain” purchasing power.
In this regard, he recalled that “in the last year of the previous administration (headed by Mauricio Macri), wages fell a lot and inflation was 54%”.
In another comparison with the management of Cambiemos -today Together for Change- Batakis stressed that “lowering inflation is not nonsense, as others said”, and maintained that current levels cannot be reduced “to one (annual) digit in the short term”.
The country needs “exporters to export more” and “not speculate on what they are going to do next month.”
Likewise, he assured that the dollar “is at competitive levels” in its current official price and that the Multilateral Exchange Rate (average price that is calculated in comparison with the currencies of the main trading partners) “is at the levels that it has to be “.
In that sense, he indicated that the country needs “exporters to export more” and that “they do not speculate on what they are going to do next month,” and he stressed that, for that, there is a Multilateral Exchange Rate that is “at competitive levels as at other times in Argentina.”
Dialogue with the IMF
Batakis said he was going to “try to talk” with IMF representatives during the day and remarked that in the Government “none of us would like to have this dialogue, but it is there, there is an agreement and we have to comply with it”.
The head of the Palacio de Hacienda warned that “seeing the goals of each review, there will surely be some modifications” because “the world is changing due to the issue of war”, with rises in international prices that led to an increase in energy import amounts.
“I think the second quarter was over and the second half is very complex, there are many and very strong maturities,” he said.
Referring to these maturities, he pointed out that “there is a very strong one in September, there is also a strong one in July and that, obviously, is going to generate tensions.”
“We have to be realistic and honest, tensions are going to exist, but we have to work together” to reach a solution, he said.
The reasons for inflation
As for the reasons for inflation, Batakis made a special mention of the “multi-causal” qualifier, used recurrently and even incorporated into IMF documents.
“Multicausality is a very nice word, but one has to identify what are the causes and what is the weighting” of its componentshe pointed.
In this regard, he pointed to “inertia” as one of those causes, but differentiated the attitude of “people who try to preserve their purchasing power against inflation”, which he considered “totally understandable”, from “speculative inertia” which, sentenced, “we cannot allow”.
“A supermarket owner already said it: ‘I emphasize, I emphasize and I emphasize,'” he criticized, referring to statements made on June 7 lastwithin the framework of a conference for the 20 years of the Argentine Business Association, the owner of La Anónima, Federico Braun.
In any case, he stressed that “it would be very naive” to believe that inflation is solved “with a Ministry of Commerce on its own.”
“We have to recognize in each of the causes what are the elements we have to reduce inflation,” said the new minister, after which she highlighted the importance of growth in the productive structure.
In this context, he argued that “development planning needs many new rules to disarm the ways of the Argentine bureaucracy.”
“Carrying out the necessary works to release productive capacity, such as the gas pipeline (Néstor Kirchner), is going to give us an important turnaround, not only in Argentina but in the region, but that takes many years,” he stated.
Despite the extension of these deadlines, he argued that “you cannot put all that aside and look only at short-term things, you have to do both.”
