Massa will follow the strategy elaborated by Batakis (and before by Guzmán) with the IMF

goals and criticism

The official, following the Guzmán and Batakis thesis, considers that the goals for the third quarter were met. With some accounting and alternative exchange movements, but effectively. Batakis conveyed to the now executive officer something that Guzmán had already warned the former minister: that the criticism conveyed by the managing director for the Western Hemisphere, Ilan Goldfajn, will have to be put up with. Batakis, who met the Brazilian-Israeli in Washington a week ago and saw his toughness face to face, recommended that Massa concentrate on updating the goals and objectives for the agency’s next mission, which, if things go as planned expected in Buenos Aires, it would materialize at the end of August. The Government trusts in the promise that Washington made to the country: that any alteration of the goals and objectives due to Creole breaches will be resolved in a full year. In other words, if the agreement is breached, it will be evaluated by the body that manages Georgieva in the first quarter of 2023. And not in the second half of this year, which would imply extra problems for the country. This was what was negotiated by Guzmán, and which was later endorsed (not in writing) by the IMF staff. It is with confidence in this assumption that the Palacio de Hacienda reported a primary fiscal deficit in May of some $162,412 million, driven by a 90% increase in spending, also reversing the surplus of $25,714 million in the same month of 2021, period in which the Solidarity and Extraordinary Contribution operated positively in the collection, for some $80,234 million, money that did not exist this year and that, in any case, would not have served to finish the income and expenses in blue.

Time

Batakis conveyed to the people of Massa that despite the growth, the projection for 2022 still maintains the balance with the guideline of a final primary deficit of 2.5% of GDP, as agreed with the IMF; and that there should be no alarms in the relationship with the organism. It will be one of the issues in which the minister will have to take control quickly. He won’t have that much time off. As reported by this newspaper, the IMF will give Massa and his people a truce so that they can settle in the position and design the strategy of numbers and percentages to present when the time comes to meet the technicians of the international financial organization . Time flies. Both parties know that before the end of September, there must be a resolution in Washington on the fulfillment (or not) of the goals for the first semester of the year. Before that, there will be a new and, as always, annoying mission by the agency to verify the fiscal, monetary and macroeconomic accounts of the country. And before this, Massa will meet face to face in Washington with the Fund’s inspectors.