The president of the Central Bank, Miguel Pesce, affirmed that the agreement reached with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is “a great step” because it “reduces uncertainties” and will allow “Argentina to grow sustainably, reduce poverty and grow employment.” .
In a report with the newspaper Perfil, the head of the monetary organization expressed his confidence that “We are going to have a process of inflationary deceleration”in which the reduction of the fiscal deficit will contribute and for the current year they project an increase in international reserves “of the order of 5 billion dollars.”
Pesce maintained that the agreement reached with the IMF has characteristics similar to those that the organization closed with Iceland in 2008 and he gave as an example of this that the Standby agreement “which today we are substituting for the Extended Facilities (…) does not rest exclusively on a price adjustment, a strong devaluation or a strong increase in the interest rate, but rather regulatory mechanisms were used to prevent balance sheets from generating a macroeconomic problem.”
“We are at a growth floor for this year of the order of 4%”
Regarding the economy, the head of the Central Bank maintained that “we are at a growth floor for this year of the order of 4%” and even hinted that “it is very possible that Argentina will surprise again with its interest rate. growth this year.
“Argentina’s growth rate is always surprising, as it was surprising last year, when in September we were expecting growth of the order of 7% and it ended up being 10%”, slipped the official.
Fish insisted on the “importance of increasing exports. Last year we exported practically 78 billion dollars”.
“We came with export levels of the order of 64 billion dollars. It is very difficult to be able to sustain this dynamic for years, but if Argentina exceeds 80 billion in 2022, I believe that a path of very important economic growth will open”, he stressed.
Pesce also emphasized that “we are working so that there is an increase in reserves, it is a point of discussion that we have with the International Monetary Fund. It not only depends on our surplus in the foreign exchange market, but also on this contribution that the Monetary Fund is going to make.”
“We are working for an increase in reserves, it is a point of discussion that we have with the International Monetary Fund”
“We have a month of interest expiration ahead of 1.5 billion dollars per year, but we are going to receive this disbursement of around 4.3 billion. So there we have an increase in reserves and we are also expecting an increase in reserves as a result of the negotiations with the multilateral credit organizations with which we are working bilaterally and also in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, so that this year we have a positive net result,” he said.
After which he summarized that “We are expecting an increase in reserves for the end of the closing, when speaking of the order of 5 billion dollars, but this is something on which we are working and refining numbers because we still have discussions with the Fund regarding this figure”.
On the political level, Pesce expressed his interest that the Senate this year “can define an agenda where it can deal with my statement”, because he is in charge of the entity “in commission” because its ratification still remains, and that “hopefully we achieve these objectives of economic development of our country, of employment generation and growth and that will be a greater guarantee to be able to continue in office.”
By way of closing, the head of the Central Bank said that if we achieve these objectives, “we also have the chance that President Alberto Fernández will be re-elected next year.”
