Juan Manuel Barca
08/26/2021 21:35
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 08/26/2021 9:35 PM
Martín Guzmán
defended this Thursday the debt in pesos,
acknowledged that it would be "desirable" to lower the Country Risk
and admitted that the increase in the issuance generates
pressure on the dollar
.
Those were some of the definitions given by the Minister of Economy in Congress, after criticism from the Juntos deputy, Luciano Laspina.
The official began his presentation by explaining the challenges in terms of debt since the beginning of Alberto Fernández's administration in December 2019 and reviewed the measures adopted to conclude that this front is "stabilizing", despite the
strong maturities of US $ 19,000 million that will have to be paid in 2022 and 2023
, according to the films he presented.
In this context, he addressed the criticisms of the opposition in recent days regarding that "debt problems are our management" and said that "
when it is said that financing the fiscal deficit is a bad thing, an adjustment of the fiscal deficit is being called for. public spending
".
"What would have happened if there were no ATP, Repro, IFE, extension of the AUH and the Alimentar Card", he asked himself.
The minister thus referred to several measures that were adopted in the framework of the pandemic and that fueled the monetary issue to finance extraordinary spending, but which were later discontinued -as is the case of the IFE and the ATP- and allowed the deficit to be reduced. primary in the first seven months to $ 300,000 million (0.7% of GDP), 70% lower than in 2020.
After listening for an hour to the minister in the bicameral debt monitoring commission,
Laspina
took the opportunity to slip strong criticism. "
I have not seen in economic theory that there is a good fiscal deficit when my management spends and bad how much that of another sign spends,
" he started, and recalled that the government of Mauricio Macri took charge of "the dead of the previous administration", in reference to the payment of the debt with the holdouts.
Guzmán agreed that "there is no good debt and bad debt," but argued that the State should play a role of "protection" by expanding spending and reducing the deficit. "The issue is how to do it, here the differences are clear. For us,
reducing the size of the State and contracting spending only contributes to making recovery impossible
," he argued.
The other counterpoint arose around the restructuring of the debt with private bondholders.
Guzmán
highlighted the high percentage of adherence and the "substantial relief" in maturities, but
did not give explanations about the collapse of the new bonds issued
, which took the country risk from 1,000 to 1,600 points.
"I have the thesis: we haven't grown for 10 years," Laspina said.
In this regard, Guzmán replied that "it is healthy and desirable that the country risk goes down."
"A drop in the EMBI benefits the private sector in a country with investment projects,
the answer to this risk is that there is a set of problems not yet resolved,
" he added.
He specifically mentioned the lack of agreement with the IMF.
The legislator also said that the issue is an "inflationary tax", compared Alberto Fernández's fiscal deficit with that of Rodrigazo in 1975, and said that "the average debt measured in dollars is faster," while warning that
the debt in pesos adjusted for inflation (CER) is almost US $ 29,000 million and "can go to the dollar
.
"
Guzmán said that the indexed debt is "sustainable", but acknowledged that there was an "additional" monetary issue due to the pandemic, which puts pressure on the dollar.
"
What do we do, where to cut, Repro, investment in housing, education? We have all these tensions and they put additional tensions on the exchange gap
," he said.