Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked the IMF on Friday for a “fair” deal for Argentina in the renegotiation of its debt.
The Alberto Fernández government, which took office in December 2019, is negotiating against the clock with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) an extension of terms for the payment of maturities on some 44,000 million dollars that it contracted in 2018.
“I take this opportunity to make a call to the IMF so that they give Argentina a fair treatment, that the IMF assumes its responsibility in the indebtedness,” said López Obrador.
The leftist president argued that the IMF must recognize “honestly, ethically” that they made a “mistake” by granting the government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) credits “beyond what is reasonable.”
“For political reasons they wanted the acting president to win again and so they gave them money and what they did was aggravate the economic and financial crisis in Argentina (…). There is co-responsibility, they have to assume that,” he said. López Obrador, without expressly citing Macri.
López Obrador has strengthened ties with the also leftist Fernández, who in February 2021 made an official visit to Mexico and in 2019, as president-elect, was received by López Obrador.
After their meeting in 2019, the Mexican president had already expressed his support for Fernández in the negotiation with the IMF.
sem / jla / mr
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