Caputo arrives in Washington: talk at JP Morgan and meeting with the head of the IMF

The Minister of Economy Luis Caputo arrives this Wednesday in Washington to participate in the Assembly of the International Monetary Fund, where his colleagues and central bank presidents from around the world meet this week, just when Argentina is about to close with the organization the second review of the program, which will allow a disbursement of 1,000 million dollars.

One of Caputo’s first activities in this capital will be a talk organized by JP Morganone of the banks that sponsored “Argentina week” last month in New York. Together with the head of the Central Bank Santiago Bausili and with the Secretary of Economic Policy Jose Luis Dazathe minister will speak at noon in the conference room of a downtown hotel about “Argentina’s path after the legislative elections” last year.

The thing is that in the last assembly of the organization, in October of last year, Argentina was the protagonist because at that time it received a huge package from Donald Trump’s government ($20 billion) to stabilize the financial turbulence before the midterm elections, which finally culminated in a large victory for La Libertad Avanza. Bankers and investors want details of what happened to the economic direction after those elections and How the Government’s plan continues.

Caputo and Bausili will also participate Thursday in a talk at the Atlantic Council on “transforming reforms into growth and job creation.”

The agenda of the minister, who returns to Buenos Aires on Friday afternoon, also includes meetings with the heads of all international credit organizations in Washington: the managing director of the IMF Kristalina Georgieva; the President of World Bank, Ajay Bangaand that of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Ilan Goldfajn. Also a meeting with the president of the CAF (Development Bank of Latin America), Sergio Díaz Granados.

Beyond participating in the Assembly’s discussion panels on the global economy and holding various bilateral meetings, Caputo will also be present at the G20 ministers’ meeting.

But the entire economic team, including the Argentine representative to the Leonardo Madcur Fund, will be very attentive to finalizing the details of the second review of the program with the organization, which according to the Bloomberg agency, which cited people familiar with the matter, could arrive “as soon as this week”, with the publication of a staff-level agreement, the technical document that is submitted to the executive board for approval.

If the board approves the review, something that would finally happen a couple of weeks after the technical agreement, a disbursement of about US$1 billion for the country would be activated.

Officials are in constant conversation with IMF teams because the review has dragged on for months, and even a mission from the organization traveled to Buenos Aires in February to closely review compliance with the program, which was closed a year ago. A key issue has been Argentina’s difficulty in accumulating international reserves in the Central Bank, a key requirement for the Fund.

In the first review of the program, Javier Milei’s government had to request a waiver for not having met the accumulation goal. However, the Central Bank began buying reserves daily in January and in recent days accelerated that pace significantly, in the midst of the Argentine harvest, a key source of foreign currency income.

In Washington they welcome this trend, although the second review corresponds to last year.

Argentina has the key support of the United States on the boardwhich as the organization’s main shareholder has fundamental weight. In a conference he held within the framework of the Assembly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated it emphatically: “This time is different in Argentina. Argentina has had fantastic success. They are accumulating reserves every day,” he said during an interview at the Institute of International Finance (IIF).

The IMF predicted that Argentina’s GDP will increase this year by 3.5%, less than the 4% it had predicted in January, “largely due to the lower boost in activity in the second half of last year,” they told Clarín, although it will be one of the fastest growing economies in the region. The organization also estimated that the average inflation for 2026 will be 30.4% or 25%, measured point by point.