Argentine President Alberto Fernández announced this Friday morning (28) that the country has reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to which it owes US$ 44 billion (R$ 236.7 billion) . The amount is part of a debt incurred in the previous administration, by Mauricio Macri.
“I want to announce that we have reached an agreement with the IMF,” said the president, in a speech at the Olivos residence. The country will meet the payment of the debt installment due this Friday, of US$ 731 million (R$ 3.9 billion). The main maturity takes place in March, the value of which is still under negotiation.
Fernández said that the agreement “does not restrict, limit or condition the rights of our retirees to recover our economy impacted by the pandemic”. “It also doesn’t force us to undertake a labor reform. It promotes our investment in public works and doesn’t force us to reach a zero deficit.”
The Argentine president added that the agreement will not jeopardize “our social spending or our requests for funding.” However, he said that the debt as a whole “is priceless without risking our present and our future.”
The agreement, on which Minister Martín Guzmán has been working in recent months in several meetings with the command of the IMF, will be taken to the Argentine Congress for approval. After that, it will still be evaluated again by the fund.
A gradual reduction of the fiscal deficit was agreed to reach 0.9% in 2024. In 2022, the target is to reach 2.5% of GDP. Argentina also pledged to reduce currency issuance, a resource widely used during the first few months of the pandemic, to alleviate the impact on the economy.
The program agreed with the IMF will last two and a half years, with revisions every three months. In this period, new shipments are planned in “stand by” mode, so that the country “creates the conditions, in investments and in the revitalization of the economy, to pay the total debt”, said Minister Guzmán.
The speech was loaded with political messages, with criticism of the previous government for having contracted the debt. There was also a request for the opposition to facilitate the progress of negotiations, approving the agreement with the IMF in Congress.
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