MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

IMF closes office in Argentina

The International Monetary Fund permanent representative in Argentina, Andrew Wolfe abandoned last weekend Buenos Aires signaling the definitive closure of the local office following a request from the Argentine government.

According to the Argentine press the departure of the IMF representative does not represent a "rupture" but rather a "cooling" of relations between the Argentine government and the multilateral organization.

The definitive step was given last January 3 when President Nestor Kirchner anticipated the cancelling of all of Argentina's IMF debt, 9.5 billion US dollars.

Deputy representative Nigel Chalk will be responsible for turning off the lights in the office that for several decades has been functioning in the Argentine Central Bank.

Fluent in Spanish Wolfe arrived in Buenos Aires mid 2005 and contrary to his predecessors John Dodsworth and John Thorton who had stormy, exhaustingly tense relations with local authorities unable to reach an IMF/Argentina agreement he managed a quiet low profile understanding.

Knowledgeable in River Plate culture, Wolfe had been in Argentina previously for a brief period 1995/96 and earlier in Uruguay from 1992 to 1995. Furthermore in 2002 he was back in Montevideo to help with the rescheduling of Uruguay's foreign debt following the contagion from the melting of the Argentine economy.

However his second two year period in Argentina was short lived following Brazil and Argentina's concerted decision at the end of 2005 to cancel all pending IMF debts.

Argentine president Nestor Kirchner relations with the IMF were never smooth and he accused the multilateral organization of having greatly contributed to Argentina's indebtedness and financial crisis of 2001/02.

But the closing of the Buenos Aires office is not the end of links with IMF: Argentina's Economy Minister Felisa Miceli will be travelling this week to Washington to the IMF annual assembly. She's scheduled to meet with IMF Director General Rodrigo Rato, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz and US Treasury Secretary John Snow.