(Washington) Milei’s ultraliberal government is taking “bold” economic measures, said Wednesday the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who approved the release of a payment of around $4.7 billion to the Argentina.
“The new administration is taking bold steps to restore macroeconomic stability and begin to address obstacles to growth,” Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement after a board meeting.
The latter approved the payment of 4.7 billion dollars to the South American country as part of its debt restructuring program.
The head of the IMF also estimated that the initial measures taken by the government of Javier Milei, elected in December, “made it possible to avoid a balance of payments crisis”. However, “the path to stabilization will be difficult,” she warned.
The ultraliberal president is also struggling in Parliament, where elected officials began on Wednesday to examine his ambitious set of deregulatory reforms.
This IMF aid was announced on January 10 by the Washington-based institution, but remained conditional on the approval of its board of directors.
It aims “to support the considerable efforts made by the new authorities to restore macroeconomic stability and help Argentina meet its balance of payments needs,” the IMF declared at the time.
In exchange for this payment, Buenos Aires undertakes to achieve a budget surplus this year (before payment of debt interest) equivalent to 2% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), the IMF specified in a press release.
This is the seventh revision of the agreement on the restructuring of the $44 billion debt contracted by Argentina with the institution.