The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, during a press conference in Buenos Aires.ESTEBAN COLLAZO / AFP
The Argentine peso will not be devalued again.
And it will not happen again like in 2001, when the State looted dollars from private accounts and left depreciated pesos in their place.
President Alberto Fernández tried to allay society's growing fear of the risk of a major financial crisis and assured that Argentina continued to be "a country with enormous opportunities."
In a telematic speech addressed to businessmen on Wednesday morning, Fernández admitted that the situation was very difficult, but he tried to be optimistic: "The only good thing amidst so much tragedy is that we finally touched the bottom of the well" and "we only have to get better".
“We have problems and today we are facing a problem due to a lack of foreign exchange that we inherited, due to a mistrust that is created because things are repeated that are not true, from those who argue that a devaluation is coming or that we can keep people's deposits : I would never do such a thing ”, promised Alberto Fernández.
Almost all financial analysts believe that the umpteenth devaluation is practically inevitable.
At the beginning of 2016, a dollar was worth 10 pesos.
Today, almost five years later, the official price is 82 pesos per dollar and the free price is 167: despite the rigid exchange controls, the Argentine currency loses value every day, the difference between the various exchange rates seems unmanageable and the Central Bank runs out of reserves.
The International Monetary Fund predicts that Venezuela, Peru and Argentina will be the Latin American countries hardest hit by the crisis linked to the pandemic.
The economic environment is bleak.
At the same time, political tension continues to increase.
Former President Mauricio Macri reappeared on Monday with a television interview in which he assured that it was Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and not Alberto Fernández, who really ran the country: “The Vice President is leading the Government as we all thought it would happen;
she has an agenda of her own in which she needs to bring to justice, "he said, referring to the multiple trials for corruption and abuse that the former president faces in court.
Macri also affirmed that the quarantine had to end now, despite the fact that Argentina is among the seven countries in the world most affected by the pandemic.
Alberto Fernández's reaction was virulent.
He went to an ideologically related television,
C5N
, to blame everything on Macri.
"You left a mess," he said, addressing the former president and mentoring him.
"Macri, for you to remember, the quarantine allowed us to set up a health system that you left destroyed, create a Ministry of Health that you closed, set up a Ministry of Science and Technology with which you ended, start a series of hospitals that were built in 2015 and that by decision of your governor [María Eugenia Vidal, former governor of Buenos Aires] were never inaugurated ”.
On Wednesday, at the telematic opening of the annual conference of IDEA (Instituto para el Desarrollo Empresarial de Argentina), Fernández once again attributed responsibility for the situation to Macri.
He assured that he had assumed power in December of last year, when “the country was in intensive care after having gone into crazy debt, asking the IMF for more money [the total loan was $ 57 billion] and allowing the money to run away .
We arrived in a recessive Argentina that had closed more than 25,000 SMEs, had increased unemployment and the precariousness of work ”.
Judging by the comments they wrote after listening to the president's speech, the businessmen were not very convinced.
Like the IMF, with which Argentina is now negotiating a debt restructuring after doing so with private creditors, businessmen are asking for a coherent economic plan.
Before the president spoke at the IDEA colloquium, Kristalina Georgieva, director of the IMF, referred to the complicated situation in the country: “Argentina faces dramatic challenges with no easy solutions, the recession is deep, social conditions are worsening [ 41% of Argentines live in poverty], economic imbalances are growing and the divorce between the official and parallel exchange rates is also growing, ”he commented during the institution's annual meeting in Washington.
"The most important priority is to implement a credible economic agenda," he added.
Since the pandemic broke out in March, Alberto Fernández and his government have been unable to do more than improvise, pressured by the double crisis, health and economic.
Now, in addition, they have to face the discontent of a wide sector of society.
Many of those who voted for former President Macri in October 2019 (just over 40 percent of voters) express their dissatisfaction with demonstrations and the discussion on social networks reaches very serious levels of virulence.
With public spending financed by debt and banknote printing (less than 15% is covered with tax revenues) and with annual inflation around 40% (in September it rose 2.8%), Fernández will try to sustain in the next weeks his promise that there will be no more devaluations of the peso.
