The former Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, defended this Saturday the agreement with the IMFstressed that “it had characteristics not at all common” since “there was no contraction of the State” and supported the management with the international credit organization and the review of the goals.
“There was no removal of rights to retirees, there was no contraction of the State and that is part of the merit of the negotiation carried out by the government of Alberto Fernández“said the former official in dialogue with AM750.
“The IMF asked for a classic adjustment, like the one that was applied in the Government of Mauricio Macribut we stood in that we were not going to do that,” he added in defense of the terms of the agreement. “It is important that the negotiations with the IMF are taken as political negotiations and not as technical negotiations to build support for the policies that Argentina needs”.
About the statements of the vice president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner On the request of the president of the Central Bank to participate in the negotiations, he pointed out: “CFK told about a meeting in 2021 in which the president of the Central Bank asked her to run me out of the negotiation with the IMF. She defined that it was not like this and that was important to move towards the framework agreement that Congress approved and that allows reviews every 3 months”.
He also stressed that the current international scenario should be taken into account: “There is a challenging context at the international level to which the drought has been added”
“From the economic point of view, you always have to adapt to the circumstances that arise, which are evolving all the time. The agreement with the IMF gives you a general framework of how to navigate economic policy in a context of financing restrictions that are very harsh for Argentina,” he stressed.
“The agreement with the IMF is made on questions of uncertainty: all the time there can be events that imply recalibrate certain goals of the agreement. This is included in point 11 of the agreement: it talks about ‘shocks’ that may make it necessary to recalibrate certain goals. Today there is a drought that implies a cost in terms of the capacity to generate foreign currency,” he pointed out about the current situation of cuts in crop projections due to the drought. “The drought is harsh: we are talking about a drop in agricultural exports of around 16, 17 billion dollars in the year”, he explained.
On renegotiation of the goals that were consolidated last week, in which the IMF considered revising the reserve goals given the impact that the drought will have, marked: “The agreement with the Fund has several goals. One is the Reserves goal, the other is Fiscal, and the other has to do with how you finance the fiscal deficit. The sense of renegotiating the reserve accumulation objective is to give the economy the ability to react to events such as drought”
Asked about the possibility of breaking with the agreement as some leaders point out, he questioned “what does it mean to break with the IMF?” “You have to define what that means. If you tell me what it is recalibrate goals, in reality you are not ignoring anything because that is provided for in the agreement; If you tell me what it means to say ‘OK IMF, we’ll never see each other again’, that would be another story”.
“Breaking with the Fund would mean breaking with the countries of the world. Does this mean that there are no circumstances in which that could happen? No not at all. If they wanted to trample on Argentina, that would be something that should never be allowed, ”he added.
He also defended the negotiation that he carried out with the organization and highlighted: “Another achievement was that the IMF for the first time made an analysis of the sustainability of the debt of a country that was not under a program, such as Argentina in 2020. The agreement with the IMF had characteristics that were not at all common”.
In addition, he explained that in the last meetings he had with the IMF, he defended the discussion for the removal of surcharges: “I I fought to the death with the IMF over a particular issue, which was the interest rate issue. The Fund wanted a very large interest rate increase. I said that Argentina could not sustain it, we should have cut key investments for development.”
Source: Ambito
