Massa met with the US ambassador to reactivate the credits

Amid the difficulties to stop the loss of reserves, Sergio Massa met the American ambassador, Marc Stanley this Sunday. The Minister of Economy was received at the diplomatic office, where they reviewed his next trip to Washington it seeks to reactivate credits for 2,000 million dollars and private investments in the country.

During the meeting requested by Stanley we talked about it the tour that Massa will start between the end of August and the beginning of September. The goal, in principle, is to meet representatives of the IMF, World Bank, Treasury, IDB, CAF and investment funds on Wall Street in Washington.

“Thanks to Sergio Massa for yesterday’s productive meeting. We look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role,” Stanley said on Twitter on Monday. On the part of the minister, they stressed that “it was a regular meeting with the ambassadors”.

In his first scale, the head of the Treasury plans to meet the director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva. The official had already anticipated last week that he will ratify the achievement of the goal of lowering the deficit to 2.5% of GDP in 2022, in the agreement signed in March. Although he did not specify, he will reach the goal of reserves and monetary issuance.

As part of his tour, the Tigrese will try to launch late loans. The idea is to unlock $ 1.2 billion from the IDB, $ 700 million from the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) and the same from the World Bank. “They are not new loansif the disbursements are not blocked, everything is quite on track “, slip the official sources.

According to Télam, he would also meet the president of the central bank, David Malpass, the director for the western hemisphere of the United States National Security Council, Juan González, and in the United States Treasury it is not excluded that Massa may organize a meeting with the Secretary Janet Yellen and Deputy Secretary David Lipton.

The head of the economy has already received the green light in the virtual interview he held last week with the head of the IDB, Mauricio Claver Carone. After trying to block the disbursement of approximately 800 million dollarsthe agency announced a program worth more than $ 1 billion.

Indeed, the government confirmed on Monday that the institute has given the green light to a $ 80 million loan to boost the productivity of MSMEs in Argentina. There were also contacts with the head of the CAF, Sergio Díaz-Granados.

On Wall Street, Massa will try to advance in negotiations with a group of international banks to obtain what is called “repo” in financial jargon. to get hold of the dollars that are the basis of the Central Bank’s reserves. It is a loan for which Argentina could offer Treasury bills as collateral and therefore access rates that it cannot access today.

Close to Massa they calculate that 1,200 million dollars could arrive, but in the banks they are more skeptical. They point out that the sovereign debt buyback mechanism seems “inconvenient” because of the tariffs the country would have to pay and why a lot of debt would have to be issued to capture a few dollars, just at a time when the pressures on pesos debt still persist.

The minister’s original plan was to visit the United States, France and Qatar, but he ultimately decided to split the itinerary into two parts. In the second stage, will try to unlock negotiations with the Paris Club. Guzmán was supposed to travel to France in July to restructure a $ 2 billion debt, but the talks broke down after his resignation.

Abroad, the steps of the new “super-minister” are closely followed, who has not yet been able to define his deputy minister of the economy. The decision could be known in the next few hours. Yesterday the appointment of the Secretary of Energy, Florencia Royón, to replace Darío Martínez, and the departure from the Undersecretary for Electricity, Federico Basualdo, were made official.