Friday, March 29

The Government seeks to reinforce reserves with more SDRs (Guzmán stays in Russia)


The implementation of this financial tool was confirmed by the IMF authorities weeks ago. Within the official statement, the agency also clarified that it will not only be for low-income nations, but also for those with medium income, which included Argentina in the list of beneficiaries. Therefore, the Government is betting that its strategic partners will transfer the Special Drawing Rights granted last year to the instrument to mitigate the consequences of the pandemic.

As Ámbito learned, this is one of the main reasons why Martín Guzmán has stayed in Russia. “He has been asking for this Fund for more than a year and the Russian government could integrate DEG”, they explained from the Ministry of Economy. In this way, Argentina will seek to add fresh funds that could arrive during this same year to reinforce the Central Bank’s reserves and get closer to the objective of accumulating an extra US$5 billion.

So far, it is unknown how the resources that developed countries will contribute to the Resilience Fund will be distributed. In the Government they bet that it will be a bilateral negotiation but they do not rule out that the IMF itself determines how many Special Drawing Rights correspond to each of the beneficiaries. Other countries that would be willing to cede currencies would be Spain, Mexico and China.

According to what this medium was able to find out, during the next few hours Martín Guzmán will hold meetings with political authorities but also with businessmen. The Russian Direct Investment Fund appears as a key player in this regard. In December, he led a trade mission in the country in which business opportunities were explored in different sectors of the economy.

Projects and investments

The Argentine president yesterday held a face-to-face meeting with his Russian counterpart. The axis of the conversation was on trade and the possible arrival of investments. “Argentina is very dependent on the International Monetary Fund and the United States. We need to open other bridges, and bet on multilateralism, without being satellites of anyone”, said Alberto Fernández, pointing out the need to deepen ties.

In that sense, there are talks to make investments in the energy sector. As Ámbito learned, at this level Russia is interested in gas, oil and wind generation. Another of the targeted sectors is the railway, one of the projects in progress is a train that would link Vaca Muerta with Bahía Blanca to reduce logistics costs and improve the export output of the deposit.

“There is a very advanced dialogue to carry out technology transfer projects from Russia. The example of the vaccine leaves us with the experience that we can work in this direction, ”explained one of the officials who is part of the delegation to this medium. At the same time, he explained that work is being done on the purchase of ships, planes and rolling stock that could be added to the 70 multiple electric units that were announced days ago.



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