Former Minister of Economy Martin Guzman warned that the debt with the IMF is “so big that it won’t be able to pay for a long time”. “The damage is really great. That is the severity to which Together for Change exposed Argentina And when it comes to thinking regarding what Argentina we want, we have to look very carefully where they left us,” he said.
The former official admitted that he lacked political support to move forward with his program and stressed that now the negotiation with the IMF is no longer classified as an “adjustment agreement.” “You cannot run an economy without political support and there were actions that ended up generating the opposite of what the economic program was looking for,” said Guzmán, eight months following his resignation from the Palacio de Hacienda.
Along the same lines, he maintained: “Before, with a clear expansion of spending, sand spoke of the ‘adjustment agreement’, now it is seen that the narrative has changed and it seems that it is no longer of the adjustment. And if you look at the numbers, it’s very clear what happened.”
Guzmán gave a radio interview in which he announced that he had just created a “`think tank´ called Suramericana, which is growing and from where programs are articulated to address structural issues for the country”. “The great challenge of economic policy is to distribute the costs of this drought in the most progressive way possible, taking care of the most vulnerable segmentss,” he said.
Likewise, it maintained that “in order for fiscal policy to ber countercyclical, it is not enough just to spend more, there must be a counterpart in the availability of foreign currency”.
Guzmán on the relationship with the IMF
Guzmán maintained that “If the IMF wants to trample Argentina, it is something that should never be allowed”. In addition, he took the opportunity to tell something regarding his management at the Palacio de Hacienda: “I fought to the death with the IMF in recent months over a particular issue that was the interest rate. We had our vision on that and we stuck to it.”
In this sense, he pointed out that the fiscal deficit “is not the only cause of inflation.” “You can lower the deficit and have more inflation, in fact it is what has been happening and happened during the administration of the previous government“, he added.
Macri gives signs regarding his electoral future: “I will be collaborating from where I think I can contribute more”
And he said that “there have been different formal and informal communications by members of the opposition regarding the public debt market in pesos that are highly irresponsible and, furthermore, ill-founded.” “Anyone who wants to govern Argentina has to be very clear regarding where they are going. Many candidates say they have a plan. Well, say so, What is your plan. What are we going to vote for,” she said.
The former minister also considered: “very important that the negotiation with the FMI be taken as a political and not a technical negotiation to be able to build conditions of support for what Argentina needs, which is to be able to carry out the policies defined by the Government”.
He recalled that “the agreement establishes in article 11 that there are conditions of uncertainty and that there may be events -different types of shocks, mentioning climatic ones- that imply having to recalibrate.” In the end, Guzmán argued that Argentina is “effectively a bi-monetary economy with a very weak currency that must be worked on to strengthen it.”
AR / MCP
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