The Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, will once again meet face to face with the authorities of the Monetary Fund during the spring meetings of the organization and the World Bank. The official, his Secretary of Finance, Pablo Quirno, and the head of the Central Bank, Santiago Bausili,
will travel to Washington this Tuesday,
where they are expected to resume negotiations with the team of Kristalina Georgieva, whom Caputo
congratulated yesterday for having been re-elected to the front of the IMF.
The Government is still
looking for dollars
to abandon the stocks, so it is negotiating with multilateral organizations, banks and foreign funds, without concrete signs yet. In recent weeks, there were meetings with members of the CAF and the IBRD, an entity of the World Bank, according to
Clarín.
And the Fund praised "impressive progress" more than a week ago, but insisted on
"firm" measures and improving the "quality of fiscal adjustment," which means advancing lasting reforms.
Although the Central Bank
accumulated more than US$13 billion in reserves
since the change in management and approached the goal, it was able to do so thanks to the restrictions that it is now seeking to eliminate. To do this, the President said that he needs a cushion of US$ 15,000 million,
a goal that is still distant
since Caputo must cancel at the end of the month the payments for almost US$ 1,900 million that he postponed with the Fund last week and since Monday the BCRA
will release another quota for the payment of imports.
The negotiation with the US and Georgieva is key to also unlocking funds from their financial "arms." Javier Milei met last Thursday with the head of the IDB, Ilan Goldfajn, in Miami, to evaluate the "technical support" for cutting subsidies and the "efficiency" of social spending. Caputo seeks to resume these conversations and maintain other contacts in Washington within the framework of the summit of finance ministers that will be held between Wednesday and Friday.
The last time the minister met with the head of the Fund was in February within the framework of the G20 summit in Brazil. The Bulgarian economist supported the adjustment plan, but reiterated that it does not
need support for the reforms
and reinforced the demands raised a week earlier by number 2, Gita Gopinath, who during a mission to the country demanded a
reform in Profits, changes in the formula retirement and a brake on dollarization.
The Government sent some signals in recent weeks. On the one hand, the new Bases Law project was circulated, along with the package with which it seeks to recompose collection and reinforce the fiscal adjustment. The combo includes an increase in Profits for workers and an increase in the monotax, accompanied by relief for companies with the Personal Assets reform, a tax moratorium and money laundering.
On the other hand, a new retirement scheme was made official, after losing almost 40% of its purchasing power in the first quarter. And
the restrictions were made more flexible by reducing the payment period for imports to 30 days for SMEs
(instead of the staggered schedule of 30, 60, 90 and 120 days) and authorizing the advance payment of 20% to purchase capital goods, in the midst of the paralysis of plants and the drop in activity, as is happening in Acindar
Meanwhile, Caputo continues
to ignore the Fund's requests to accelerate the devaluation of the dollar and raise rates.
The "ironed" dollar serves as an anchor to slow down inflation that dropped to 11% in March due to the collapse in demand. And the rate cut, like the one that the BCRA applied again on Thursday, is key to continue liquefying the quasi-fiscal debt of the Central Bank and savings in pesos.
The Government can do it because it maintains the stocks, although both measures carry risks. It was the former Minister of Economy,
Domingo Cavallo, who advised against lifting the stocks and unifying the exchange market in the middle of the year
due to the difficulty of lowering inflation faster, so he proposed that it is first necessary to accelerate the official exchange rate and formalize the
exchange rate split, a measure that Milei described as "stupid."