The trip of officials from the Ministry of Economy to the United States to close the renegotiation of the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suffered new postponements and neither party confirms the start of face-to-face meetings that would mean an imminent signing.
Last Friday when Argentina paid U$S 2,700 million the Palacio de Hacienda reported that this week a mission would arrive in Washington in search of the final wording of the memorandum.
The IMF also issued a statement ratifying the payment, but he did not allude to possible meetings in the US capital.
The holiday of this Tuesday, July 4 for Independence Day in the United States supposed a logical delay in the boarding of the Argentine officials, but with the passing of the hours it continues without confirming when they will do it.
Consequentlya, with each day that passes the situation is more pressing because while the negotiations continue to operate expirations that must be faced with the very few resources available.
This Tuesday the government He paid private bondholders some US$ 1,000 and what should be normal compliance by the Argentine State deserved to be highlighted by the Secretary of Finance, Edward Setti.
“According to the usual schedule, we will be making the payment of coupons of the titles denominated and payable in foreign currency”said the official on his Twitter account.
Setti stressed that «In this way, we once again reaffirm our commitment to the payment of public debt obligations and the management of a financial strategy that allows to give calmness and certainty to the markets”.
The payments correspond to coupons of titles that participated in the last debt restructuringcarried out in 2020 by the then Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán.
The continuous bleeding of reserves and the last payments made sank the total reserves of the Central Bank below US$ 28,000 million, but the net are negative by more than US$ 5,000 million. On the day of this Tuesday, the Central ceded another US $ 47 million.
Hence Setti came out to mark the field and clear up doubts about the payments in dollars that the Argentine State must make.
Next Monday the bondholders they must have credited in their accounts new interest payments for US$ 1,022 million.
In this regard, the economist Salvador Vitelli conjectured that one possibility is that yuan is used, but warned that for this we will have to wait for authorization from the People’s Bank of China to carry out the conversion and thus be able to make the turns since the payment currency is the dollar.
To this accumulation of obligations is added that on Friday operates a capital maturity with the IMF for US$ 1,294 million, the first of the three that must be carried out in July (U$S 647 million on Friday the 14th and U$S 680 million on July 28).
However, it should be clarified in relation to these payments to the IMF that the situation of June may be repeated, with a postponement of all maturities towards the end of the month pending the closing of the agreement and the disbursements.
To the datethe IMF has stepped on the US$ 4,200 million that had to be sent at the beginning of June, which was not sent because the fifth revision was not approved. The next transfer for US$ 3,500 is scheduled for mid-September.
Therefore, a bridging agreement is being worked on with a disbursement of US$ 7,800 million and guidelines to be met as of December 31, eliminating quarterly reviews.
Before a query from this medium, the economist, Pedro Siaba Serrate, specified that the net reserves are negative in US$ 5,007 million and stressed that “not only does it represent a minimum of the Alberto Fernández administration, but it also equals the floor inherited by Mauricio Macri from Cristina Kirchner in December 2015”.
“Coupon payments will surely deepen this dynamic, and, therefore, negotiations with the IMF to advance disbursements are quite relevant”he added.
For Siaba Serrrate “advance disbursements is far from a real solution, if not a simple way to mitigate the problem for a couple of months” and considered that “The delay in reaching an agreement suggests that the negotiation is more complicated than expected.”
The economist insisted that “the crux of the matter is that on the one hand the IMF should look “the other way” with regard to the unfulfilled goals of the program, while Argentina does not have much to offer, neither in fiscal terms, nor in terms of devaluation”.
In this scenario too awaits the press conference that the IMF should offer this Thursdayafter three weeks in which he did not open the usual exchange with journalists.