Five days, four cities, two debts. The Argentine Minister of the Economy, Martin Guzman, begins in Berlin, Monday April 12, a trip which will conclude in Paris on Friday April 16, with stops in Rome and Madrid, in order to renegotiate the debt contracted by his country with the Fund Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Paris Club, an informal group of international creditors under the aegis of the French Treasury. “The objective is to find the necessary support from IMF shareholders (…) to materialize a plan that works for Argentina”, specifies the Ministry of the Economy. “The debt we have inherited is irrefutable”, said President Alberto Fernandez (center left) at the end of March, an antiphon since coming to power in December 2019, and a finding corroborated by the IMF itself.
“The first stone on the way to Argentina is the $ 2.4 billion [2 milliards d’euros] due to the Paris Club [dont certains membres correspondent à la gouvernance du FMI]. This shift is doubly important “, notes Juan Telechea, director of the Institute of Labor and Economy, a private research group. This debt, largely inflated by automatically raised interest rates, after Argentina stopped honoring it in 2019 in the midst of financial turmoil, is the remainder of a refinancing established in 2014. Time is running out. The repayment, which can be extended by two months, ends in May. “Argentina will seek to delay payment and renegotiate interest rates”, anticipates the economist.
“With this trip, Argentina also seeks to show its goodwill, by telling the Paris Club and the IMF that it is prepared to pay”, notes Elisabet Bacigalupo, economist in the private firm Abeceb. The intention was not in doubt. The Argentine President has regularly reiterated his wish to repay the $ 45 billion credit owed to the Fund, part of a loan of $ 57 billion granted under the presidency of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), the payment of which was suspended due to the crisis. end of term, but under conditions that “Would not fall on the Argentines”.
Officially initiated at the end of August 2020, these discussions were to be sealed in the first quarter of 2021. However, for several months, the Argentine executive has been repeating, like the president at the beginning of March, not to be in a hurry, in a puzzling change of tempo.
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