The Senate approved and turned over to the Chamber of Deputies, without the support of the opposition, a bill from the ruling party that creates a National Fund for the Cancellation of the Debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with money escaped abroad in a irregular.
The initiative was endorsed by 37 positive votes once morest 31 negativein a session led by the provisional president of the Senate, Claudia Ledesma, in the absence of Vice President Cristina Kirchner, who is in charge of the Executive Branch during President Alberto Fernández’s European tour.
The rule establishes that the fund will be constituted in US dollars and will be valid until the total cancellation of the debt with the IMF occurs..
It also adds that its resources will be exclusively destined for this purpose and must contemplate the amounts foreseen or reserved for rewards to collaborators.
The author of the project, the senator of the Front of All (FdT), oscar parrillideclared that some do not support the proposal because “they have doubts” and others “simply because they support the evaders”, and assured that there are no fissures in the ruling party on the idea that the IMF “should not govern” Argentina.
“It is true that we had some differences but what we all agree on, down to the last militant, in the Frente de Todos, is that we do not want the Fund to govern us”expressed the Neuquén senator and assured that the main objective “is to get rid of the IMF.”
The text that the Chamber of Deputies must now analyze -with more difficulty for approval as the ruling party itself assumed-, determines that the Fund will be administered by the Ministry of Economy.
The process of control, inspection and supervision of its management will be carried out by the Permanent Bicameral Commission for Monitoring and Control of the Management of Contracting and Payment of the Foreign Debt of the Congress.
The objective is to pay the debt of more than 44 billion dollars with the IMF contracted by the government of former President Mauricio Macri in 2018.
The opposition interbloc of Together for Change agreed to give a quorum at the beginning of the session that lasted eight hours, but expressed its opposition to the proposal, describing it as “undercover money laundering.”
At the end of the debate, the president of the Frente de Todos bloc, José Mayans, assured: “The indebtedness of almost 90% of the GDP cannot be settled with speeches. No country can tolerate this policy of speculation and usury. This project may have mistakes, but the debt will not be paid by those who do not owe”.
In his speech where he harshly criticized former president Mauricio Macri, Mayans asked: “Where do you want it to come from to pay the debt they left us, from the disabled, from social plans or do they want us to take money from retirees? Here we bring the idea of a fund and that those who have undeclared assets abroad contribute.”
For his part, the president of the radical bloc, Luis Naidenoff, today expressed his bench’s rejection of the bill that creates a fund to pay the debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and assured that it is time for the ruling party ” begin to rule.
In his speech, he accused the ruling party of “being trapped in its own internal” and of not having “any achievement” in the management of the Government to exhibit since he took office in 2019.
As an informant member of the FdT, Senator Daniel Bensusán (La Pampa) responded that it is not true that it is “laundering” but that “it implies preventing taxpayers from paying the millionaire debt” contracted and that “those who pay it and make contributions benefited” from capital flight.
The legislator described the “critical situation” in which the country was left following “the largest credit granted in the history of the organization (by the IMF) in conditions -he said- impossible for Argentina to comply with.”
He added that these funds “were not allocated a single peso to health, education, investment or industry” and clarified that the rule “does not exempt from responsibilities for smuggling, drug trafficking or human trafficking nor does it limit the current powers of the State to investigate and sanction behaviors.
For Bensusán, the indebtedness left by the management of the previous government of Mauricio Macri “has harmed our sovereignty and our economic independence.”
Representing the opposition, Víctor Zimmermann (Chaco-JxC) said that “avoid evasion and improve collection is a shared goal” but clarified that the current project overlaps with regulations that already govern and harm those objectives.
“A tax regularization is permanently possible in Argentina that allows to save the evasive behavior of many of the taxpayers disappointing those for us to pay our taxes,” he maintained and said that “it is absolutely unnecessary to promote a law of these characteristics.”
Clara Vega, senator allied with the FdT for La Rioja, expressed for her part that she does not believe that the norm is “the solution” but considered it “an advance”.
“We might have done a better project analyzing what the legal scaffolding is,” said the legislator who, however, accompanied the FdT in the sanction.
