Argentine Economy Minister Sergio Massa expects the International Monetary Fund to approve a $7.5 billion disbursement on Wednesday as the country’s program faces growing uncertainty after primary elections last week.
(Bloomberg) — Argentine Economy Minister Sergio Massa expects the International Monetary Fund to approve a $7.5 billion disbursement on Wednesday as the country’s program faces growing uncertainty after primary elections last week.
Argentina also anticipates getting another $2.75 billion payment from the IMF in November pending a staff-level review, Massa told reporters in Washington following meetings with World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank officials. Massa added that Argentina will receive an extra $1.3 billion from the development banks by year end.
The IMF board is scheduled to vote on Argentina’s loan after a staff-level agreement was reached last month. Massa’s comments came after a senior government official last week said that the nation intended to ask the IMF to increase the disbursement. On Tuesday he brushed away a question about whether the country was asking for more.
Massa, running as the incumbent party’s presidential candidate, declined to provide a specific forecast for inflation in August and September after the annual pace of consumer-price increases reached 113% in July. Massa blamed Argentina’s 18% currency devaluation last week on the IMF, saying it was a condition for receiving the August disbursement.
The devaluation “will hurt people’s pockets,” Massa told reporters, conceding the peso’s plunge will fuel more inflation. “We’ll try to correct that with measures that we’ll be announcing within a very few days.”
Massa doesn’t expect the general election in October to impact the November IMF disbursement. Javier Milei, a libertarian who wants to dollarize the economy and close the central bank, catapulted to the front of the field with this month’s primary vote.
(Corrects payment figure for November in second paragraph; Adds financing figure from IDB and World Bank in second paragraph)
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