02/17/2020 - 21:20
- Clarín.com
- Economy
The Government told the envoys of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that "there will be no permanent freeze" of the tariffs of public services and said that the revision of the tariff schedules will be done to take them to "reasonable and accessible" values, with the objective of controlling inflation.
"We point out our vision. We explain that at the time of greatest complication the idea is to generate a mechanism to review the rate scheme and then an update of those rates," said Monday the Minister of Productive Development, Matías Kulfas , at a press conference in Government House.
Kulfas met last Thursday with Julie Kozak and Luis Cubeddu, who wanted to know how the government was going to handle the issue of tariffs, and the minister said he told them that "it is not a permanent freeze" which was applied last December .
"Nor to sustain this partial freeze for a long time. But, to make a revision that allows to reduce, where possible, the costs of the electrical and gas system, and to be able to generate reasonable and accessible tariffs," said the official.
He said that Kozak and Cubeddu "see that (the partial freezing of tariffs) is an instrument that can contribute to reducing inflation," he added that they also understood that "it is a fundamental step to attack the inertial component."
"In this we find a quite positive receptivity on the part of the technicians of the Fund who were in the meeting," said Kulfas, who stressed that the meeting took place in "very good terms."
He explained that "the agency wanted to know some central elements of the productive development program", and "how we are looking at the issue of economic and social agreement, our estimates, and how the Price Care program is evolving."
"We explain our vision of inflation. What is a phenomenon that has multicausal characteristics. That focusing the problem exclusively on the monetary side leads to errors?" Said the minister.
He said that Kozak and Cubeddu assured them that the Government will "be able to control inflation with a macroeconomic program that is fiscally and monetaryly consistent , and a good concertation policy that allows downward convergence."
Within the framework of the visit of the agency's technical mission, an exchange took place between Sunday and Monday between the Fund's managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, and President Alberto Fernández.
Georgieva responded this Sunday to Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who last week suggested that the IMF should analyze the possibility of granting a debt withdrawal that Argentina maintains with the agency, considering that money was used to allow escape of capitals.
The head of the Fund told Bloomberg TV on Sunday that it is not possible to take a measure of the characteristics raised by the Argentine vice president.
Meanwhile this afternoon, the President said that "the IMF has failed in its obligations by lending money to a compulsive credit taker, who all knew it was to finance the flight of foreign currency," and considered Cristina Kirchner's claim "absolutely true." .
"In rational terms, what Cristina says is good. Everyone knew that it was to finance the flight of currencies and try to contain an uncontrollable dollar value. If the IMF was capable of all that, it could reflect and take this into account," Fernandez said.
Source: Télam