Sergio Massa sees Dilma Rousseff: they seek another mechanism for the BRICS to help Argentina

After Lula's statements that the BRICS bank will not provide a guarantee to help Argentina relieve its reserves, the delegation headed by Minister Massa slipped in Shanghai that there is another mechanism that can be reached.

"It was not possible," Lula said Monday about reaching a deal to help Argentina. His statements were read as a misstep by Alberto Fernández and Lula himself who worked together on that proposal in Brasilia and consisted of a direct loan or a guarantee to alleviate the suffocating situation of Argentine reserves.

That bank was baptized as New Development Bank and its shareholders are the members of the BRICS, Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa. He has just taken office as its president, Dilma Rousseff.

The issue is that a clause of the BRICS bank makes the agreement for financial guarantees unfeasible. Nor can it be lent to Argentina since it is not a member country, as established in Article 7 of the institution. Massa and Dilma Rousseff chatted via zoom for an hour and a half. And a technical team analyzes several alternatives, they said here.

These possible shortcuts arise from the impossibility of a quick entry of Argentina into that group of countries or of modifying an article of the statute to obtain quick and guaranteed funds, as President Lula da Silva promoted with opposition from his Central Bank. They claim that the new possibility would take shape next Thursday. No one wanted to anticipate here what it is about.

Precisely this Thursday there will be a formal meeting between Massa and Rousseff in Shanghai. On Monday night, Central Bank President Miguel Pesce spoke with Rousseff herself in Shanghai, where the bank's governors' meeting is taking place. There was hope to include Argentina's request but in the end it was shelved, according to Brazilian Economy Minister Fernando Haddad.

The New Development Bank (NDB) was also studying the possibilityof financing Brazil's exports to Argentina, to mitigate the problem of access to foreign currency.

It is curious but yesterday some clung to the statements of Haddad, Lula's economy minister: "In the Ministry of Finance we work day and night to support Argentina. And I firmly believe that the New Development Bank is part of the solution," said Haddad, who said he seeks not to suffer even more bilateral trade due to the economic crisis, aggravated by the shortage of dollars, high inflation and a severe drought.

Shanghai, Special Envoy