In the document on the debt crisis, Cristina Kirchner traces a journey of the public debt in Argentina since the military coup of Jorge Rafael Videla and lists three crises: the first, between 1976 and 1989, during the years of the dictatorship ;
the second, between 1989 and 2001, under Menemism and the outbreak of convertibility, and the third, emerged in 2016 during the government of Mauricio Macri.
There is no reference to what happened with the debt during the K administration and during the government of Alberto Fernández
, who also
ratified the debt with the International Monetary Fund.
After the outbreak of convertibility, at the end of 2001, among other reasons
due to the default of the debt,
the following two decades were marked by an
incessant growth of public debt
.
And despite the restructurings and exchanges carried out by the different governments that followed, that debt reached such levels that they once again placed Argentina in a
situation of insolvency
,
without reserves in the Central Bank,
with an
annual inflation
rising by three digits and
poverty
levels
higher than 45% of the population.
After the confiscation of deposits, asymmetric pesification, Boden 2012 and the debt swap, at the end of 2005,
during the government of Néstor Kirchner, the public debt amounted to US$ 154,270 million.
In December 2015,
Cristina Kirchner left the Government with a debt of US$240,665 million
, an increase of US$80,635 million, in the midst of an
increasing process of capital flight.
First there was a strong capital outflow between 2007 and 2011 and then in 2014/2015.
And in December 2019, at the end of
Mauricio Macri's government,
the debt rose to US$323,065 million, an increase of another US$82,400 million.
During the Macri Government, since 2018, Argentina had closed access to international credit markets.
Macri tried to overcome this situation with
the extraordinary loan from the IMF.
But in reality
it worsened the debt
because that credit financed the outflow and flight of capital - which was accentuated between 2017 and 2019 - and because the IMF is a privileged creditor that does not allow haircuts and the maintenance of the credit is conditioned, among other objectives, to the compliance with fiscal, monetary and exchange goals.
Furthermore,
the interest rate that Argentina was paying for that loan was increasing
and so far interest of almost US$10 billion has been paid to the IMF.
In November, at the end of Alberto Fernández's term,
the debt totaled US$425,294 million,
according to data from the Ministry of Finance.
This gross debt does not include that of the Central Bank or that of the Provinces and Municipalities.
During the Government of Alberto Fernández, with the international credit market closed, the debt in pesos grew, but in bonds and securities adjustable by inflation or by the value of the official dollar.
Due to the strong devaluation, in December 2023 the debt in pesos was reduced in dollars and the stock of gross debt decreased from US$ 425,294 million to US$ 370,664 million.
But this debt is expected to increase again because more than 90% of the debt in pesos is contracted in CER bonds (which are adjusted for inflation) or dollar linked (they are adjusted for the official exchange rate), according to the Report of the Congressional Budget Office (CPO).
So, in these first months of 2024, indebtedness will grow again due to the transfer to these bonds of the inflationary spike in December and that expected for January since the adjustment of those bonds in pesos operates with a certain delay in relation to the own devaluation of the peso.