IMF asks Argentina for plan that attacks inflation and has “broad political and social support”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The reaction of the International Monetary Fund was expected after the announcement of President Alberto Fernández, who indicated that he will send to Congress a bill with a plan that will include the renegotiation proposal.

Tonight, the Agency called for Argentina to present a plan with “broad political and social support”, and to attack “high inflation”. “Our goal remains to help Argentina and its people,” added a Fund spokesperson.

The organization considered “important” that the plan it is negotiating with Argentina to refinance the debt has strong political support. Argentina has debt maturities with the organization of US$ 17.8 billion in 2022, US$ 18.8 billion in 2023 and US$ 5 billion in 2024.

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After the elections, President Alberto Fernández announced that he will send to Congress a bill with a plan that will include the renegotiation proposal. Fernández stated that “in the first week of December of this year we will send to the Congress of the Nation a bill that makes explicit the multi-year economic program for sustainable development.”

The new law will have to deal with the new composition of the Congress, since the new legislators will take office on December 10, and almost certainly in extraordinary sessions.

An IMF spokesperson insisted that work continues to “reach full understandings on a comprehensive plan that can durably address Argentina’s most pressing economic and social challenges, including high inflation, which disproportionately hurts the most vulnerable.”

The request for support for the plan demanded by the Monetary Fund is linked to the fact that the agreement that could be sealed would cover at least three terms of government.

Negotiations with the IMF will be accelerated in the next two weeks before the presentation to the Legislature. However, the government rules out the possibility of a mission of the organization to Buenos Aires for the time being. They assure that first the Board of Directors of the Fund must meet in mid-December, where the great powers are represented and where this eventual trip must be voted.

Perhaps the mission will then be postponed until next January. The tour is a necessary precondition for a subsequent agreement. The idea is to seal it before March, when the impossible maturities of the record loan granted by the IMF to the government of Mauricio Macri fall due. Incidentally, Fernández was in favor of the pact, but clarified again and again that he will not accept an adjustment and attacked again and again his predecessor for the contractual program signed in 2018.