The International Monetary Fund announced Tuesday that the agency’s mission in Buenos Aires concluded and that the dialogue was “Highly constructive and positive”, While the expectations of the prompt signing of a new program went down to say that the conversations “They will remain ongoing in the coming weeks.”
The mission of the Fund, headed by Luis Cubeddu, deputy director of the Department of the Western Hemisphere of the Agency, had arrived on Wednesday of last week in Argentina. The Economy team, led by Minister Luis Caputo, had been gathered with the IMF technicians until Monday to refine the details of a new financial program that gives it a disbursement (the Government longs for about US $ 12,000 million) to reinforce reservations And thus be able to lift the stock without problems this year.
“Negotiations come well,” an economy official had said after participating in conversations.
However, the Fund statement seemed to lower the expectations that the agreement is soon to close, as the government estimated.
Official sources of the agency said briefly that “an IMF mission visited Buenos Aires last week to advance in conversations about a new program. The dialogue was highly constructive and positive. The technical teams will continue to talk in the coming weeks. ”
The fund managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, had already said days before in Washington, after meeting with President Javier Milei, that the idea was to “work quickly” in a new program.
“We discuss the future of our cooperation. We are going to work with the new program, a background team will travel to Buenos Aires next week and I think the result will be a more prosperous and dynamic Argentina “Georgieva had said after meeting with Milei and announce the mission to Buenos Aires.
“We want to work quickly with the new program to take it to the Executive Board,” he added, without giving more negotiation schedule details. “It’s a good time to give more wind to Argentina’s candles,” he graph.
Milei seeks to fasten a new agreement with the agency, a program that economy officials have been negotiating with the fund for months, a continuity that was signed in 2022 with the government of Alberto Fernández and that ended in December.
The government feels strengthened to negotiate because with its reforms it has achieved and overcome the goals, especially prosecutors, and now seeks that the new plan contemplates a disbursement of at least $ 12,000 million, which is what Milei estimates that it will be necessary to get out of stock without turbulence.
But in the fund of the Fund, which recognize Milei’s reformist efforts, there are still doubts about giving more money to Argentina that could vanish in trying to contain the dollar in an electoral year.
While negotiating with the background, the Government decreed the temporary decline of retentions for the main products exported by the field, a measure that would relieve the exchange front because it seeks to anticipate exports and accelerate the purchase of reserves.
The IMF spokeswoman Julie Kozack, had scheduled to give her traditional conference in Washington of the press this Thursday, where she was expected to give more details of the mission, but was postponed for next week.