The Ministry of Economy announced the launch of a new debt swap after the meeting held by the country’s main bankers with the head of the portfolio, Sergio Massa. The operation will include maturities of March, April, May and June, which will be postponed to 2024 and 2025 as announced by Ámbito.
He debt swap, for some $7.7 trillion, will have the intention of “ordering the curve” of maturities, sources from the Palacio de Hacienda indicated. In this way, the short-term horizon will be much more relaxed before the PASO elections in August, which is considered a key period for the market.
“Without a financial system that is stabilized and capable of providing credit, an economy does not work, so for us to have a financial system, a system of local, public, private, and international banks that is strong, vigorous, and that also has in the State an ally to work together to improve credit capacity and improve the depth of access to the idea of savings in the Argentine economy is essential,” Massa said at a press conference.
Massa thanked “enormously for the seriousness and professional work with which throughout these weeks of fighting or discussion with the financial system and the State and the national public sector, which for many months was posed as the biggest problem and the biggest uncertainty of the Argentine economy, which were the maturities of the debt in pesos, can have a program and a programming that gives peace of mind to the saver, to the depositor in the first place”.
Regarding the operation, the minister said: “The most relevant data of this tender that is being launched, of this so-called voluntary exchange, is that it breaks with the idea that Argentina has a debt reprofiling every week at the door. We have already had a reprofiling of the debt in pesos at some point, we have seen the frustration, pain and failure that this meant for Argentina and we understand that having an orderly, predictable debt profile is fundamental for the financial system, fundamental for the State and for the saver and the citizen enormous peace of mind”.
The debt bomb
In a message to the opposition that stirred up the ghost of a “bomb” of debt in pesos, Massa considered that this agreement “deactivates the idea that every two or three months something is about to explode”, and assured that “it gives it a curve maturing in 2024, 2025, much more orderly, also associated with the fiscal order program”.
On the other hand, he maintained that “the challenge of lowering public spending on our part decompresses the idea of having to go permanently looking for financing or looking for transitory advances from the Central Bank to put the economy in the idea that the fiscal order is the anchor The most important thing we have when it comes to managing the national public sector, is a task that we have to go through together.”
“Breaking the uncertainty around whether the State is capable of financing itself in the internal savings market for local debt was essential, and this jump from the mountain as many called it, I read in some media ‘there is a smell of reprofiling’, all those ghosts they end, so let’s work together not only because this allows us to clear up the uncertainty for 2023, which is enormous peace of mind for you and for savers, but also because it has to allow us to be the basis or design it as the basis of other agreements to improve the level of access to credit for citizens, which is ultimately the best way to give our economy a chance,” said the Minister of Economy.
And he added: “For this we need a strong financial system, and we, from the economic team, creativity and tools at the service of the economy so that the citizen is encouraged to deposit much more, but above all to take much more credit to restore confidence in our currency”.
Fight against inflation
While the minister also spoke of the program to lower inflation, in what is a start of the year in which the rise in prices accelerated again, especially in food.
“Inflation is fought with a fiscal order, with the accumulation of reserves, but also with control of circulating money*, as well as with an increase in the supply of goods by the private sector that gives our economy dynamism and that It is a job that in these second six months of management of this team we are going to face to try that this challenge of lowering inflation is also an achievement of this economic team, for that, this work that we face together is essential,” he said.
Source: Ambito
