2023-07-14 03:14:53
Sergio Massa, along with Fernando Moreira, Axel Kicillof, Gabriel Katopodis and Veronica Magario
“Argentina is going to agree with the Fund,” said Sergio Massa, Minister of Economy and Union for the Fatherland candidate, yesterday at an event in San Martín.
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Quick, he added that this new agreement that he is negotiating with the body chaired by the Bulgarian Kristalina Georgieva will be made “defending the idea of a development country with inclusion. We are not going to resign our sovereign capacity and we are not going to surrender to the altar of fiscal adjustment either. The role of the State is fundamental”. And she emphasized: “To make it clear: we are talking, we are negotiating, we are very close to leaving 2023 closed and having an agreement, but we do it on the basis of defending an idea of the country.”
Massa did not talk regarding yesterday’s inflation data, 6 percent for June, although he did refer, briefly and tangentially, to the rise in the free dollar, two days ago at a record above 500 pesos, pointing to “Those who agitate fears, who panic because speculation earns people a little bit.”
Sergio Massa spoke regarding the IMF and calls from members of the opposition to the body
Negotiations with the IMF are frantic and the tension is undisguised: the reformulation of the current agreement, which both parties agreed was necessary due to the tremendous impact of the drought on the numbers of the local economy, should have been closed weeks ago. A graphic image of the scenario: “Madcur, Cleri and Rubinstein have already changed the tickets several times,” they say at the Palacio de Hacienda. The reference is for the vice minister Gabriel Rubinstein, the chief adviser Leonardo Madcur and the vice president of the Central Bank, Lisandro Cleri, the heads of the technical team that threatens almost daily to get on the plane to fly to Washington.
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Massa has been repeating for a long time that he is not going to allow his officials to travel without the closed technical agreement: he says, directly, that he does not want them “hostages” in DC. As Infobae advanced, in Economy they assure that the chapter on disbursements is closed and that the discussion is now regarding the fiscal deficit. “Massa is planted at 1.9 points. That is what is under discussion”, they said on Wednesday close to the minister.
The disbursement, if everything continues as discussed in the last zooms, will be USD 6,000 million and work is being done, amid a dance of figures, versions and twists and turns, to close the technical agreement next week. However, everything can change in the blink of an eye. Once the staff level agreement between the technicians of both parties is ready, the proposal will have to be approved by the agency’s board. Massa wants a single agreement until the end of the year and without any review. In addition to bidding for the deficit, will the IMF ask for a devaluation? It is another of the doubts that persists… and that Economy emphatically denies.
Massa and his team with Gita Gopinath, the second of the IMF
As part of the discussion, the minister intensified his contacts with the White House in recent hours: his good relationship with front-line officials is known, such as Democratic Senator Bob Menéndez; Juan González, Joe Biden’s trusted man for Latin America; and Mike Pyle, deputy advisor to the National Security Council, among others. Biden promised help, spoke of a “bridge” for Argentina.
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President Alberto Fernández would also have an important role in guaranteeing the support of the G7 within the IMF board. He is scheduled to speak with Emmanuel Macron, his French counterpart; with Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor; and with Giorgia Meloni, President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. He will see some of them next week in Brussels, Belgium, at the Celac-European Union summit.
Massa does not rule out the Chinese route. Yesterday morning, at her usual press conference, the IMF spokeswoman, Julie Kozack, denied a version that indicated that China had put pressure through a message written by her representative on the board to reach a quick agreement. . She was blunt: “There is no such letter.” In Economy they agree: “There was no letter, it is true. But China’s position regarding strong support for the country was already raised by the director in the body [Zhengxim Zhang]; and it is clear that we can pay the Fund with yuan, in fact, we did it last time”.
As this medium was able to learn, in a context of increasingly meager reserves, Economy has already asked the Central Bank to activate the mechanism for expanding the currency swap between the two nations. It will be done for the equivalent of USD 10,000 million and, if the management is successful, gross reserves would grow by that amount. The Central Bank, for its part, has to request it from the People’s Bank of China and the possibility of President Fernández communicating, possibly by means of a formal letter, with his peer Xi Jinping is not ruled out.
At the same time, in a parallel effort, the activation of a second tranche of the swap for the equivalent of USD 5,000 million was also requested to be used to pay for imports and intervene in the exchange market. Of the first tranche of USD 5,000 million, according to private estimates, USD 3,000 million have already been used, among other purposes to pay the IMF at the end of June.
Yesterday in San Martín, in addition to confirming that he is going to close with the IMF, Massa activated the “ON campaign mode” and criticized, without giving names, opposition economists. “I am going to tell you something private: a Fund official in a morning zoom told me that there were opposition economists who in recent days communicated and told them ‘don’t give them anything’, ‘ask them for everything’, ‘demand them to the maximum’, ‘this has to explode’”, he highlighted.
“How unpatriotic your opposition colleagues are,” he said the IMF official told him from DC, via screen. Later, surely, they returned to the discussion regarding the program. The same one that is “close” to closing, as the minister-candidate said once more yesterday.
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