The Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, will meet this Friday with
Brent Neiman
, an envoy from the United States Treasury, to resume conversations about the
adjustment plan, the agreement with the IMF and the progress of the reforms
.
The official met on Wednesday with the head of the Central Bank, Santiago Bausili, and will continue with other representatives of the government and the private sector.
"Caputo will meet tomorrow (this Friday) with Neiman," they confirmed at the Treasury Palace.
Neiman is the
Undersecretary of International Finance
of the US Treasury, an intermediate position in the organization chaired by Janet Yellen, and his arrival coincides with the attempt to resume the blocked reforms, with a new bill and the DNU, which yesterday suffered another blow in the Senate.
In Washington, they are closely following the direction of the shock plan.
Although sources familiar with the meeting maintain that the visitor is only a "mid-level" technician, this will be the
fourth meeting
in recent weeks that Caputo has held with Treasury officials, the equivalent of the Ministry of Economy in the United States and the main shareholder of the Monetary Fund.
In these talks, the bilateral relationship, economic reforms and cooperation with multilateral organizations were addressed.
This Tuesday, the minister reiterated that he is talking with the IMF to design a new program that expands the loan to Argentina and that he is open to
"giving some more money
," although spokesperson Julie Kozack said last week that it is "premature." talk about that topic.
The Government agreed to present a roadmap at the end of the month to lift the stocks and abandon the
"blend" dollar
in June (80% to be settled at the official value and 20% in cash with settlement).
But the President recognizes that he still needs reserves.
“I prefer to play it safe, as they say in the IMF, and target it in the middle of the year.
If they give me 15,000 million dollars, I will open it tomorrow
,” he said this week.
The Fund sees
"good progress"
in its reduction, but asked that the burden of adjustment not fall disproportionately on vulnerable sectors.
The same advice that Yellen raised two weeks ago during the meeting he had with Caputo at the G20 summit in Brazil.
In this framework, the minister announced this week the opening of imports to lower the prices of the basic basket.
There is concern in both the IMF and the Treasury about the "sustainability" of the adjustment plan.
The deputy director of the Fund,
Gita Gopinath,
insisted during her visit to the country in February that the Government must achieve political and social support as well as advance in the restitution of the Income tax, the removal of tax exemptions and maintaining the real value of pensions .
Milei took note of the mission: days later he launched a pact with the governors to approve his laws in exchange for tax benefits and this Thursday the new Omnibus Law project began to be circulated to them with the delegation of limited powers, privatizations and a new formula retirement, and a fiscal package that includes fiscal relief to the provinces with the reinstatement of Profits.
In the midst of the primaries in the US that brought Donald Trump back into the ring, Caputo met last week within the framework of the IDB annual meeting in Punta Cana with the former US senator and advisor to President Biden, Chris Dodd, the deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury, Michael Kaplan and with the director of the Western Hemisphere of the Treasury Department, Alejandro Mares.
Who is Nieman?
At Treasury, he works on a wide range of international economic priorities, including our response to Russia's brutal war in Ukraine, cross-border debt issues, IMF governance and programmes, global financial regulation and supervision, digital assets and cross-border payments, and key bilateral issues with various countries.
Before joining Yellen's team, he taught economics at the University of Chicago in macroeconomics, international finance and trade.
And previously, she was an international finance economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, McKinsey and Company, and the McKinsey Global Institute.
He was also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research center at Harvard University.