MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine finance minister confident the sovereign debt situation will be resolved

“We are working nonstop to resolve the external public debt crisis, the result of a failed irresponsible model...” Martin Guzman tweeted

Argentina’s new government is working “nonstop” to resolve its sovereign debt crisis, the country’s Economy Minister Martin Guzman said, a month after center-left Peronist President Alberto Fernandez took office.

“We are working nonstop to resolve the external public debt crisis, the result of a failed irresponsible model that does not work in any country of the world and which left us hostage to the international financial markets,” Guzman tweeted.

Fernandez’s government, inaugurated on Dec. 10, is set for tough talks with creditors to restructure around US$ 100 billion in debt to avoid a damaging default after former president Mauricio Macri’s administration was dogged by economic crisis.

Guzman, a young economist and acolyte of Joseph Stiglitz, has been tapped to lead the re-profiling talks with private bondholders and other creditors, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which agreed to a US$ 57 billion financing package with Argentina in 2018.

Argentina’s debt talks will face their first big test this month with a US$ 277-million payment due on a Buenos Aires provincial bond, seen as a gauge of how the indebted nation will handle its creditors.