The IMF stated that it is "very close to reaching a complete agreement with Argentina"

The director of the Western Hemisphere Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ilan Goldfajn, said that the organization is “very close with the Argentine authorities to reach a complete agreement,” when presenting to businessmen and economists in the region.

Goldfajn, who took office last month as the new director of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Departmentspoke about the prospects for Latin America at a virtual conference by the Council of the Americas.

From New York, the host, Susan Segal, consulted him about the progress of the negotiations between Argentina and the IMF.

“We have published the understanding of this program, of the social programs, we have seen what the fiscal path is, but we are now very close to reaching a complete agreement with all the details and all the reforms that are in the new program,” he said. .

And continued: “We have intense meetings, many virtual, and that takes almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” explained the Brazilian economist and former head of the Central Bank of his country..

“When we finish we send it to the board of directors and they will say what they will say; we must take into account the reality of Argentina; it is a realistic and reliable program that is only for Argentina in the broadest sense, this is a credible program, so pragmatic and feasible,” he analyzed.

The negotiations

Argentina negotiates with the Fund a new agreement with the IMF to reschedule the 45,000 million dollars of debt inherited from the management of Mauricio Macriwhich is in a stage of defining technical aspects.

The Government hopes to seal the agreement in the coming days and aims to present the details of the understanding to Congress before March 1opening date of the regular session, according to official sources.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, assured that the project on the agreement with the IMF will be sent to Congress by the Executive Power with “annexes that will contain all the documents” and “each of its details.”

“The idea that there are going to be secret documents is nonsense. Once the agreement at the IMF staff level is finalized, a bill will be sent to the National Congress that in its annexes will contain all the documents that are the basis of that agreement, with each of its details,” Guzmán said in statements made to Télam.

In parallel, in recent days there has been an intense diplomatic effort by the Argentine Government with the United States, and the favorable results for an agreement were transmitted today by Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero, who stressed that “there was support from the political wing of the administration of Joe Biden” within the framework of the negotiations that the Argentine Government maintains with the Fund.

“We needed them to get involved and that’s how it was,” said Cafiero, one day after having held a meeting with the United States ambassador to Argentina, Marc Stanley.

Also, both Guzmán and the Argentine representative in the IMF, Sergio Chodos, continued in the G20 -virtually and in person- with the search to garner support for the Argentine position when the formal vote is held in the IMF, before the teams of finance ministers who participated in the first summit of the year in Indonesia.

Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, the IMF board met informally to discuss the Argentine case, and sources close to the negotiations highlighted the “importance” of the deliberations for the approval of the agreement that would allow maturities to be postponed and the debt to be repaid for up to 12 years.