The director of the IMF, Kristalina GeorgievaHe said this Friday that “a common understanding” has been achieved “with Argentina” but much remains to be done, “the day before a technical mission travels to Washington to meet with the organization.
“What we have achieved so far is a common understanding of the importance of working on a program that significantly improves Argentina’s macroeconomic fundamentals and puts Argentina on a solid path to recover from this crisis,” Georgieva said during an event organized by Reuters .
In 2018 the IMF granted the right-wing government of Mauricio Macri a $ 57 billion loan.
His successor, center-left Peronist Alberto Fernández, rejected the pending disbursements when he came to power in 2019 but the country still owes $ 44 billion, calling for more time to pay off the debt.
The IMF director said that for now they have worked “constructively. But much remains to be done.”
“We are thinking of a program that is balanced” to address the problems facing the country because only if Argentina “supports it broadly” is it likely to be successful, he added.
On Thursday, President Fernández also spoke of progress “in building understandings” with the IMF, but asked him before the closing of “a new agreement to make his assessment of what was the failed stand-by program for which they were disbursed. $ 44 billion, which was misused to pay unsustainable debt and finance capital outflow“.
Georgieva assures that the IMF knows very well the problems of Argentina. He cites inflation, insufficient participation of the private sector in growth and poverty.
A technical mission from the Ministry of Economy and the Central Bank of Argentina will travel to Washington on Saturday to meet with the organization and will be supervised by the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, from Buenos Aires.
The Argentine government says that it plans to pay a maturity of 1.8 billion dollars on December 18.
This year Argentina has already paid $ 1.34 billion in interest and about $ 1.9 billion in capital amortization.
