The youngest member of Alberto Fernandez’s cabinet gave a press conference following the president’s announcement of the understanding Argentina reached after two years of talks, regarding the debt with this financial organization, agreed upon in 2018.

Guzman said that this program will be more robust if there is more support, and that includes the opposition, which described the understanding as a base platform to continue building solutions in an interconnected world and thus have a calmer and better integrated economy.

In charge of negotiations with the IMF since he took office, Guzman recalled that the previous administration went to the IMF and agreed to the largest loan in the history of this institution: 57 billion dollars, 45 billion of which were disbursed.

After highlighting that these were months of tough dialogue, he pointed out that with this agreement “we sought to heal the hard present that Argentina was facing.”

We always proposed to have support to be able to refinance that debt, without undermining our nation’s development opportunities and to continue building a calmer economy, he said.

As for the understanding on the macroeconomic framework for a new program with the IMF, Guzman pointed out that it has two blocks: the macroeconomic policy scheme and the so-called measures that promote growth and lasting stability. From the macroeconomic point of view, he explained that on IMF’s part, the agreement will allow having a policy that does not inhibit the continuity of the recovery. An agreement was reached without any adjustments, and work will be done to strengthen tax administration, seeking to tackle the issues of evasion and money laundering, he added.

jg/aph/mgt/may