The directory of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will deal with the week of December 20 next the report that will analyze the loan granted during the government of Mauricio Macri, with the aim of looking for lessons that will serve to avoid repeating mistakes in the future.
So an IMF spokesperson confirmed to Télam, which indicated that “the Ex-Post Evaluation was conceived as a mechanism to draw lessons after an exceptional access agreement is completed”, such as the loan for US $ 57,000 million that Maurico Macri signed in 2018, where they were later granted about US $ 45,000 million.
Thus, “for countries where a new subsequent program is contemplated, it is desirable to complete the Ex-Post Evaluation before the Executive Board considers it,” said the IMF spokesperson.
“As such, We expect the Fund’s Executive Board to discuss the report in the week of December 20.“, added the consulted source, with which that would happen before Christmas.
Thus, the Fund stated that before the body’s board of directors discuss the new program that Argentina will sign with the IMF to reschedule maturities for US $ 45,000 million inherited from the previous administration, the Fund will first analyze the lessons of the previous agreement and the possible errors that made the program fail, since it has been suspended since 2019.
It is, on the other hand, an express request from President Alberto Fernández, who in order to sign a forthcoming agreement expressed on several occasions the need to evaluate the mistakes made, including that it would have been a loan with a clear political overtone, within the framework of the reelection project of the management of Cambiemos, today Juntos por el Cambio.
This Thursday, before the businessmen of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), Fernández referred to the issue and pointed out that before the new agreement is closed, an evaluation is made “of what was the failed Stand-by program by which they disbursed US $ 44 billion that was misused to pay unsustainable debt and to finance capital outflows. “
In that sense, the president said: “We need the IMF to make this evaluation, that will help us to understand each other, it is a necessary step on this path. In order to write a new page we need to close the previous chapter.”
Meanwhile, the Argentine technical team from the Ministry of Economy and the Central Bank will travel to Washington tomorrow to meet over the weekend with the Fund’s technicians, to advance in the negotiations of a technical agreement that Argentina hopes to achieve during this month, according to recent statements by Minister Martín Guzmán.
In this regard, Fernández said this Thursday at the UIA Industrial Conference that “next week there will be a visit by technical teams to Washington to continue strengthening this progress,” and also reaffirmed that it is necessary to “resolve the problem of foreign debt.” .
“Last year we closed a successful restructuring. Now we are in dialogue with the IMF. You all know that the loan granted in 2018 is equivalent to all the help that the IMF gave the world to cope with the damages of the pandemic. If Argentina had those currencies, it could face the problems without major worries, “the President explained.
“We want to create an agreement that allows us to refinance the very large debt maturities”Alberto Fernandez
Finally, the president remarked: “we want to generate an agreement that allows us to refinance the very large debt maturities for the next three years to which the government of Mauricio Macri had committed,” and added, as he said in previous speeches, that “this will not be at the expense of the development of the country.”
While the Former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, visiting the country and in exclusive dialogue with Télam, considered that “Argentina has negotiating capacity before the IMF due to the magnitude of the aid it received”, since if the country “has a payment problem, the Fund also has it,” he evaluated, predicting the need for a soon agreement between the parties.
The previous program of the stand-by agreement foresees the payment of very concentrated maturities, of around 19,000 million dollars in 2022 and another 19,000 million dollars in 2023.
After the technical agreement, the same It must pass the filter of Congress and then be voted on by the IMF board, and everything would happen before March 2022.
Finally, Argentina must also negotiate in parallel with the Paris Club, which gave it until March 2022 to renegotiate the debt, pending an agreement with the IMF before that date.
