Given this, the most important data that the Government will begin to show this week will be the panorama of payments that will have to be faced with the IMF once the agreement is closed on the terms demanded by the men and women of the organization; mainly the North American Julie Kozac and the Venezuelan Luis Cubeddu.
The deputy director for the Western Hemisphere and the person responsible for the Argentine case, as stated in this space, hardened their position and were tough last December regarding the terms of the potential agreement. And, given this, the numbers that emerge from the already almost official lines of the Fund, speak of maturities of approximately 9,400 to 9,600 million dollars between 2022 and 2024, money linked to the payment of interest for the US $ 44,700 million of the stand by granted to the government of Mauricio Macri to be renegotiated.
This would imply that during the remaining two years of Alberto Fernández’s administration, some 18,000 million should be transferred to the IMF, a reasonable figure when compared with the projection of a trade surplus that the country should show for some US $ 15,000 to 18,000 million annually. . However, the situation is complicated by 2026, when under the terms of any classic IMF Extended Facilities, capital should begin to be liquidated. After the 4.5 years of grace without complying with these maturities, from that year, some 22,000 million dollars per year would have to begin to be settled, on a schedule that would culminate in 2031. The caveat remains that probably in 2026 the money should begin to be paid from the second semester, since the agreement would be signed around February-March of this year and the free term is 4.5 years.
The simple achievement of the logic of maturities, income from trade surplus and the rest of the economic and financial variables of the country, shows that it is a utopia to think that Argentina can generate such an amount of money; Most likely, the Extended Facilities will have to be renegotiated with the IMF and a renegotiation of maturities beyond the 10 years of the agreement should be discussed. Something that Kirchnerism asked from the first moment, and that the IMF refused to discuss outright.
Both at a technical level and the countries that handle the board. Simply, from both sides, they affirmed that an alternative of more time in the designs of the credits of the Extended Facilities type, was a utopia. Something that was not on the shelves of the organization, and that would not be modified for a case like Argentina. The only alternative is the possibility of including an automatic clause that mentions that if in the future the terms for this type of agreement are extended; the country could be directly benefited and the agreement to be signed this year renegotiated with the advantages of the case.
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