MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's total foreign debt reaches 127 billion

Argentina reported that its total foreign debt stood at 127 billion US dollars in the first quarter of the year, continuing to rise higher than when the country negotiated a record debt swap in 2005.

The increase in combined public and private debt was driven by private companies borrowing money abroad to finance operations according to the government's statistics office, Indec. Debt was 123 billion at the end of 2007. Argentina's economy collapsed in 2001-2002 amid an economic crisis that saw a crippling devaluation of the peso and wiped out many people's savings almost overnight. The country stopped paying its creditors, and several years later renegotiated the government's foreign debt to bring total debt to 118 billion US dollars. Independent economic analyst Aldo Abram said Argentina's increasing debt, and not very encouraging track record for paying it off, is causing external credit confidence to worsen alarming Argentina's May trade surplus narrowed 23% from a year earlier to just over a billion US dollars, with high prices for farm exports preventing a bigger reduction, the government said on Wednesday. In May, exports rose 28% from a year earlier to 6.2 billion, slowing from 35% growth in April. Export volumes fell by 3%, but prices shot upward by 32%, according to an official release. During most of May and June, farmers staged protests against a government tax hike on soy and grain exports, disrupting cargo traffic in rural areas and international trade. Exports of processed farm goods fell 7% in volume last month, while sales of raw materials dropped 9%. The prices of both these products soared, however. Imports surged 47% in May from a year ago to 5.2 billion US dollars. The trade surplus totaled 4.84 billion in the first five months of the year, up 7% from the same period in 2007. The surplus was 1.31 billion in May 2007