The International Monetary Fund has not yet set the date on which the seventh review of the current Extended Facilities program will begin, with which the Government refinanced the debt of US$44,000 million that Mauricio Macri took on in 2018. This was reported by a spokesperson for the multilateral entity.
The next review of the program is scheduled for November and is a necessary step for the country to reach a technical agreement at the staff level that, once signed by the Fund’s executive board, would trigger the payment of the next disbursement with which it is expected to cancel the following expirations. However, it is expected that the discussion will not begin before the presidential election runoff on November 19, which is only 10 days away. Precisely, that was the intention expressed by the Minister of Economy and presidential candidate, Sergio Massa: to prevent a new negotiation with the IMF from sneaking into the electoral process again, as happened before the PASO. In fact, the logical thing is that it be done with the next president already defined.
“There is no date for the seventh review at this time,” a Fund spokesperson said in comments reported by Reuters. “As with any review of the Fund, we will need to establish that the program remains on track to achieve its objectives and that there is work and more commitment to be done,” he added.
This Monday, the national government paid US$790 million to the IMF in interest. Last week it had canceled a capital maturity for US$2.6 billion.
The last payment was made in yuan, coming from the expansion of the freely available tranche of the swap by US$6.5 billion, which was approved a few days ago. This confirms China’s new role as a lender of last resort in the world. It was a last commitment before the next evaluation of goals to the IMF.
Source: Ambito
