"We closed last night at 11 pm."
The phrase released by an official from the Ministry of Economy reflects the vicissitudes that the Government faced to make the agreement with the IMF more flexible.
Tightened by the lack of reserves and in view of an electoral year,
the Government had to accept greater restrictions to intervene on parallel dollars
, the repurchase of debt and the implementation of the pension moratorium, a measure that fell badly in Washington .
The Fund has targeted purchases since January of
$520 million of dollar bonds.
Now without the help of the soybean dollar, the Central Bank thus contained the financial dollars, but last week they woke up again.
Now, according to sources from the Ministry of the Economy,
"the commitment is that reserves will not be used to intervene in the parallel market"
and the repurchase of debt with reserves is "suspended", something that in fact stopped in February.
The fine print of the agreement also contemplates the commitment
"not to issue short-term external debt instruments
" to intervene in parallel markets.
For some analysts, it is a handbrake on credit with foreign banks with collateral bonds, but from Economy they believe there is still room to negotiate a "repo", one of the measures that Sergio Massa announced upon taking office to strengthen reserves and which he has not yet been able to determine.
Within the exchange chapter,
the Fund would have also given the green light for a new edition of the soybean dollar or the Malbec dollar
to compensate for the loss of reserves.
During the year, the BCRA sold
US$ 1.4 billion of reserves in the exchange market,
as part of its strategy of moderate increases in the official dollar to avoid a sharp devaluation.
"
If it is to strengthen reserves, they authorize us to do it
," they pointed out in Economy.
The Fund did not specify figures on the new reserve objective, but at night from Economy they suggested that there will be a
"very significant adjustment in the first quarter"
and a smaller cut (about US$ 2,000 million) in 2023. From the portfolio they had let it be known in the morning a similar calculation, which contemplates a stock of US$ 4.7 billion in March and US$ 10.1 billion at the end of December.
In short,
it will be a breather.
After two months of negotiations and "fights" after the G20 summit in India,
the agreement with the staff must still pass the filter of the organization's board of directors
, on whom the approval of the disbursement of US$ 5,300 million depends.
The problem is that the meeting would be in April and US$2.6 billion expire next week.
With the reserves at the limit, from Economy
they are betting that there will be a deferment of payments
, as happened in December.
One of the stumbling blocks that complicated the negotiations and forced new fiscal projections was
the approval of the retirement moratorium
last week in Congress.
This "unforeseen"
decision
, according to the IMF staff, promoted by Kirchnerism, will require
"early measures"
to ensure the reduction of the primary deficit from 2.3% to 1.9% of GDP.
For this reason, the idea that a sort of segmentation by level of card consumption
is being considered .
With a collection hit by the drought,
the elimination of energy subsidies was also in the crosshairs
.
In the midst of the power outages, the Government confirmed that it will keep the registry open until mid-April to maintain aid to lower-income sectors, while the Fund confirmed that it expects progress in removing subsidies to higher-income residential users in May and commercials at the end of 2023.
The relief with the IMF was announced just
two days after Cristina Kirchner's new claim to "review" the agreement
and after a week of strong clashes with the opposition for the debt swap agreed with the banks to clear the payment of $4 3 billion in 2023. The agency has been demanding
"political consensus"
to support the program, but in the Economy they assure that "Cristina is not an issue" that worries Washington.
AQ
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