Argentine Economy Minister Silvina Batakis is in Washington until Tuesday for talks at the International Monetary Fund, the US Treasury and with investors. This, while his country faces an unprecedented monetary turmoil since the departure of his predecessor Martín Guzmán at the beginning of July.
With our correspondent in Buenos Aires, Jean Louis Buchet
Almost impossible mission for Silvina Batakis. He had to convince his interlocutors of Argentina’s ability to cope with the crisis, when the peso, the national currency, had lost 50% of its value against the dollar in three weeks and the Central Bank was short currencies.
The Minister will reaffirm her country’s desire to respect the agreement with the Monetary Fund signed by Martín Guzmán to refinance the $45 billion debt inherited from the previous government. The appointment of Batakis, following the resignation of Guzmán, had for a moment raised fears that this was not the case.
Indeed, the former minister had thrown in the towel because part of the Peronist coalition in power, that led by Vice-President Cristina Kirchner, continued to criticize the agreement in question and Guzmán’s economic policy, therefore that of President Alberto Fernández himself. Batakis had been keen to reassure markets that there would be no change of course, but that didn’t stop the peso from coming under attack.
The minister hopes to return from the United States with the support of her interlocutors, in particular the managing director of the IMF Kristalina Goergieva. But, in Washington as in Buenos Aires, we know that it is primarily the lack of unity of the government coalition that undermines confidence in the country.