MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's debt equivalent to 66% of GDP

Cancelling the International Monetary Fund, IMF, debt does not represent a significant reduction in the overall debt of Argentina, although it does mean a contraction of international exposure.

Argentina's debt with IMF represented 8.8% of the 126.4 billion US dollars total liabilities, according to the latest available data from June 30, 2005.

If this information is updated liabilities total 124.3 billion US dollars which includes the IMF transfer not as a debt of Argentina with the IMF but with the country's Central Bank which received ten year bonds in US dollars which can not be traded.

However the official figure does not include the debt swap holdouts that amount to over 20 billion US dollars, mostly small savers who refused to accept the conditions by which Argentina was able to overcome the 2001/02 default.

Most of the Argentine debt is concentrated in private bond holders from Argentina and overseas, plus banks and pension funds, totalling 38.3 billion US dollars.

Following the 2002 default Argentina kept issuing bonds (Boden & Bocones) totalling 22.6 billion plus another issue, Bogar of 10.7 billion US dollars.

This means that the bonds debt amounts to 71.6 billion US dollars equivalent to 57.6% of total liabilities.

Other multilateral organizations debts include the World Bank with 6.8 billion and the Interamerican Development Bank with 8.5 billion US dollars.

Argentina also remains in default with the Club of Paris countries, mainly loans from the highly industrialized countries which add up to 7 billion US dollars.

Other liabilities are the so called Guaranteed Loans, from the debt swap of 2001, previous to the default and which were honoured by Argentina if creditors accepted nomination in Argentine pesos of the assets. These assets total 15.2 billion US dollars mostly held by banks and insurance companies.

The report also considers the increase in the Argentine central government's debt with the Central Bank, from 4.9 to 14 billion US dollars following the IMF swap.

The overall debt is estimated in 66% of Argentina's GDP according to information available in the second quarter of 2005. This compares favourable to 2002 when the meltdown of the Argentine economy, the country's debt was equivalent to 154% of GDP.