Due to the
increase in the rate
applied by the IMF, this year Argentina will have to pay the international organization interest for 2,480.81 million SDR (Special Drawing Rights) which, at the current price, is equivalent to the
record amount of US$ 3,280 million
, which are added to the US$ 8,800 million that were paid until December 2023. In total there are US$ 12,000 million.
The numbers are from the IMF as of January 31 and detail that, in 2023, interest payments totaled 2,255 million SDR.
Thus, this year,
the 2024 interest account has an increase of almost 10%.
Of the US$ 3,280 million, these days there was an interest payment corresponding to the maturity of February 1 for US$ 820 million.
With this disbursement,
Argentina has paid interest to the IMF for a total of US$9.7 billion.
Due to the increase in the interest rate and the surcharges, and
with the same principal owed
– around 31 billion SDR (US$ 44 billion) the interest payments were increasing.
For example, in 2020 they totaled US$ 1,321 million;
In 2021 they reached a total of US$ 1,350 million;
In 2022 they were US$ 1,715 million and in 2023, US$ 3,008 million.
In 2025 and 2026 the interest remains at around 2.4 billion SDR.
What happened so that the interest burden with the international financial organization
more than doubled ?
When Mauricio Macri contracted the loan with the IMF or the former Minister of Economy Martín Guzmán renewed it, in March 2022,
the IMF's general interest rate was very low: less than 1% per year.
For example, during the time of Guzmán's renegotiation the rate was 0.25%,
but about 4 points of surcharges were already applied
: a total of
4.25%
.
Due to the increase in the international interest rate, currently (in the week from February 5 to 11)
the rate applied by the IMF is 4.133%
which, plus the 4 points of surcharges, raise
the total to 8.133%.
The interest rate charged by the IMF is made up of a base rate, plus a margin of 100 points and possible surcharges that are applied when the debtor balance exceeds certain limits, as is the case of Argentina.
Additionally, there are commissions that apply to disbursements: the commitment commission and the service charge.
Although
Argentina has been demanding that surcharges be eliminated
, given the crisis the country is going through and the weight of interests, the IMF remained and remains intransigent on this point.
NE