Monday May 8, 2023 | 6:00 p.m.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) assured this Monday that its teams “continue working constructively” with the Argentine government “to advance” in the discussion of the redesign of the program, in the midst of the “context of the very severe drought” that the country is going through.
From the economic team, for their part, they also ratified that “the talks are advancing constructively with the aim of rebalancing the program due to the severe drought,” sources from the Palacio de Hacienda told Télam this afternoon.
“The IMF and Economy Ministry teams continue to work constructively to strengthen the Fund-supported program in the context of the very severe drought. Discussions are ongoing virtually and the teams are expected to have several meetings this week to move forward with the program,” said the spokesman for the multilateral organization.
The Economy team, headed by Vice Minister Gabriel Rubinstein and the chief adviser, Leonardo Madcur, began to virtually analyze the redesign of the program with the IMF, with the expectation of trying to bring forward all the pending disbursements of the organization, scheduled for all 2023 (about US$10.6 billion) next month.
Negotiations are taking place on all fronts of the program -which has already achieved flexibility in terms of the reserve goal during 2023, by the date of approval of the fourth revision at the end of March-, due to the drought that hit the country .
This drought, which ended up being much more severe than expected, forced a request from the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, for the complete redesign of the program with the Fund.
After the minister’s participation in the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington in April, reports began to emerge that the government would seek a profound redesign of the program.
The sources indicated that “virtual negotiations with the IMF continue”, without even ruling out the possibility that the officials will travel in the coming days if concrete progress is made in the talks.
In fact, there was already a trip scheduled for the previous week, but the volatility of the financial markets and the visit of President Alberto Fernández to Brazil, which also included specific objectives to strengthen the reserves, forced to postpone the agenda of the technical team trip with the Fund, although the contacts with the organization continued to advance with the technical lines in a virtual way.
Within this framework, Madcur held an intense week of negotiations that began in Brasilia -as part of the technical delegation of the presidential trip and the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa-, dedicated to the potential new agreement with Brazil to establish an import payment mechanism in local currencies.
The official goal is to decompress the pressure on the reserves on all fronts, in an election year.
Last week, the government of Joseph Biden let it be known that it would support the acceleration of the disbursements of the Argentine program, if the authorities of the Nation can successfully negotiate a new schedule with the multilateral organization, to seek to advance part or all of that financing. from the IMF until June.
