Five days after taking office, Batakis has not yet launched the Ministry of Economy team

Five days away from taking the hottest toilet chairSilvia Batakis he still hasn’t managed to get his team up and running. The new Minister of Economy announced on Monday that it was almost finished, but in some secretariats Martin Guzmán’s collaborators are still working, given the impossibility of finding someone to replace them. Paradoxically, the same conflict that delayed the appointment of the head of the Treasury.

So far the only official is the Secretary of Commerce, Martín Pollera. Yesterday he participated with Batakis, Daniel Scioli and Miguel Pesce in the meeting with the automotive entrepreneurs of ADEFA. Karina Angeletti was also seen in the corridors, candidate for the Secretariat of Economic Policy, empty since Fernando Morra left. And the Secretary of the Treasury, in charge of Raúl Rigo, has not yet been employed by Martín Di Bella, former Scioli officials.

The minister met President Alberto Fernández at Casa Rosada at noon this Thursday to define the team and measures – he had already done so on Wednesday -, after which he did the same with the head of the Chamber, Sergio Massa, who at the weekend had to leave empty-handed after trying to get the troops down to the toilet and put the economists close to us in Economics. The minister revealed that she was desperate for the difficulties in holding key positions.

For the Ministry of Finance he has already sounded at least two massist technicians, without success. One is Lisandro Cleri, Deputy Executive Director for Operations at ANSES ‘Guarantee and Sustainability Fund (FGS), the highest office. Cleri was head of the External Public Debt Sustainability Management Unit, created by Martín Guzmán to advise him on restructuring and had previously worked in FGS operations in the direction of Diego Bossio. But he refused the offer.

The other attempted was Eduardo Setti, appointed in 2020 by Cleri as Director of Operations of the FGS. Setti was verified by ANSeS, was Investment Director of the FGS, and is the son of a Peronist economist, who was director of the Central Bank from 1973 to 1975. The ANSES survey among economists was not accidental: today, together to the central bank and public banks, the FGS is a key element in the placement of bonds in pesos.

The problem is that finance is a hot probe that few dare to grasp. Since the race for pesos bonds started a month ago, the The Central Bank had to intervene with the repurchase of Treasury bonds for over $ 1 billion and the Treasury has seen the debt renewal deadline cut even further due to banks and investment funds fear of a re-profiling like the one improvised by Hernán Lacunza in 2019.

The secretariat, meanwhile, is still in charge of Rafael Brigo, even if in reality it is managed by Ramiro Tosi, the man behind the delicate pesos auctions. The economist of the University of La Plata specializing in capital markets accompanied Guzmán in his meetings with investment funds on Wall Street, the IMF and the Paris Club. In the market, they are still waiting for signals.

The next auction will be on Wednesday to cover payments of just $ 11,000 million. But Batakis is concerned about the “tensions” that will add to the debt maturities in pesos ($ 500 billion in July, $ 460 billion in August and $ 1.2 trillion in September). “Three months are coming with a very tall tower and, despite 40% of the debt being with the state, you have to take the change, “a government source said.

Daniel Scioli’s former finance minister is not only worried about the markets. Even internal politics, a “filter” that complicates the selection of candidates and that now feeds the prudent distance from Sciolismo, La Cámpora and now Massismo. It is a risk to get stuck with a portfolio engulfed by the aggravated currency and financial crisis after Guzmán’s departure, in addition to inflationary pressures and IMF conditions.

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