MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina en route to normalize links with external creditors

The Paris Club has welcomed Argentina's pledge to repay its full debt of 6.7 billion US dollars to the group of creditor nations. Discussions on how the repayment will be made are still ongoing, the group said.

The Paris Club held a meeting Wednesday on the subject, and praised the Argentine government's September 2 debt announcement as "a very significant step towards the normalization of Argentina's relationship with all its external creditors". The administration of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is planning to pay the debt with Central Bank international reserves. Argentina's finance secretary said the exact amount to be repaid has not yet been defined. "We are working on reconciling the figures, and we will then have a clear idea of what remains to be paid" Finance Secretary Hernan Lorenzino told a Buenos Aires television station Argentina's government said Monday it has the resources to pay off around 12 billion in debt that matures next year, as well as the Paris Club debt. The Paris Club is an informal group of financial officials from 19 of the world's richest countries, which provides financial services such as debt restructuring, debt relief, and debt cancellation to indebted countries and their creditors. Debtors are often recommended by the International Monetary Fund after alternative solutions have failed. It meets every six weeks at the French Ministry of the Economy, Finance, and Industry in Paris. It is chaired by a senior official of the French Treasury, currently the Director General of the Treasury and Economic Policy Department Xavier Musca. The club grew out of crisis talks held in Paris in 1956 between Argentina and its various creditors. Its principles and procedures were codified at the end of the 1970s in the context of the North-South Dialogue.