MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Finance minister expected to meet IMF chief to renew formal ties

Resuming formal ties means allowing the IMF to conduct a review of the Argentine, which would be their first since 2006.

Argentine Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay is planning to meet with IMF's Christine Lagarde at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss resuming formal ties with the international lender, according to a report published by Bloomberg.

 Resuming formal ties means allowing the IMF to conduct a review of the Argentine, which would be ther first since 2006. Under Article IV of the IMF’s statutes, members face regular inspections in which officials from the Washington-based fund speak to lawmakers, business leaders and unions to make recommendations about the country’s economic outlook.

Argentina’s economic reporting has been questioned since 2007 when then-President Nestor Kirchner replaced senior officials at the national statistics agency and Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, censured Argentina for providing unreliable numbers in 2013. In 2006 Argentina decided to cut links with the IMF following repayment of all pending loans and accusing the multilateral organization and its economic recommendations of the country's woes.

A former central banker and executive at JP Morgan, Prat-Gay, is also Argentina’s representative on the IMF board and has said he wants to make his country credible again.

“We want an Article IV because we have nothing to hide,” Prat-Gay said in an interview in Davos.

Argentine president Mauricio Macri a few days after taking office declared a “statistical emergency” and vowed to replace the consumer price index which was elaborated by the administration of ex president Cristina Fernández in 2014. Last week Prat-Gay said that until the national stats office Indec is revamped and reorganized, it will use an inflation index from the city of Buenos Aires, which at 26.9% is nearly double the national rate reported by the previous administration.

In realted news the Argentine central bank announced that it will renew daily releases in its portal, and with the latest data, on the monetary base, international reserves, deposits, and loans.

The access link will be http://www.bcra.gov.ar/Publicaciones/pubcoy040303.asp”, said the bank in a release.