The Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, met today with the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, at the Summit of Finance Ministers of the G20. During the event, which takes place in the Indian city of Bengaluru, the headline highlighted the “Good progress” regarding the development of the fourth revision foreseen in the program with Argentina.
“Very good discussion with @SergioMassa on the sidelines of #G20India regarding the new challenges facing emerging markets and Argentina. Progress is being made on the fourth review of the Argentina program and we look forward to communicating its conclusion soon.” Georgieva tweeted after meeting Massa at the G20 finance ministers summit in Bengaluru, India.
The sum of support for the approval of the fourth revision of the program –whiche a disbursement of US$ 5.800 million from the multilateral organization will be unblocked in March- fIt was one of the axes of the bilateral meetings that Massa held in India since the summit began last Thursday.
In the same way, another of the objectives of the head of the Palacio de Hacienda was to achieve a concrete consideration by the G20 and the IMF of the impact that the war in Ukraine has on the Argentine economy, as well as the situation currently facing the country because of the drought.
The minister seeks that these aspects are taken into account in the fulfillment of goals that the country will have this year in its fourth reviews that will be evaluated by the Fund.
In addition to meeting with Georgieva, Massa touched on the subject this Thursday when he met at the summit with the Undersecretary for International Affairs of the United States Department of the Treasury, Jay Shambaugh and yesterday with his counterparts from Italy, France, Germany and Brazil.
In parallel, the Vice Minister of Economy, Gabriel Rubinstein; and the head of advisers of the Palacio de Hacienda, Leonardo Madcur; finalized this week in Washington the details to obtain the technical approval of the fourth revision.
After the end of the technical negotiations, the document will be submitted for analysis to the agency’s board of directors, in a meeting that would take place in the last weeks of next March.
So far this year, Argentina has already sent the IMF close to US$3.2 billion, which are part of the total maturities for US$ 19,850 million that Argentina will have to pay with the organization during the current year, which will be paid with the disbursements of the current program.
The period under analysis is the fourth quarter of 2022, the year that Argentina closed with a primary deficit (not including debt services) equivalent to 2.4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with an overcompliance of one tenth, since the agreed goal was 2.5%, as reported by the Government last January.
For 2023 the primary deficit target is 1.9%, in a year marked by several conditions that the Argentine government raised in the discussions in Washington, among which are the need to take into account the impact of the drought on the agricultural harvest and consequently on the income of foreign currency, as well as the continuity of the war between Russia and Ukraine, which has an impact on energy prices and transport and logistics costs.
Source: Telam