MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine economy to fall 11.8% in 2020 and rebound 4.9% in 2021, according to IMF

In June, the IMF predicted a 9.9% drop in GDP and by April 2021, it estimated that the same period would end with a 5.7% drop in GDP.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that the Argentine economy will fall by 11.8% this year, and rebound by 4.9% in 2021, the credit agency announced. This was stated in the Economic Outlook Report (WEO) called “A long and difficult road uphill”, where as a result of the pandemic it estimated a fall in world GDP of 4.4% and a recovery of 5.2% by 2021.

The global projections are slightly more encouraging than last June, when the world economy was projected to shrink by 4.9 percent. However, the recovery was uneven, as the Fund's update shows, as there was a relative improvement in the performance of advanced economies, while in most emerging economies the situation worsened and the downward projections became more pronounced.

In particular for the Argentine economy, the IMF forecast in June a decline in GDP of 9.9% and before that, in April 2021, it estimated that the same period would close with a 5.7% drop in output. However, it forecasts a greater recovery for 2021, with a figure of 3.9% projected last June, which amounts to 4.9%

The report, which traditionally also carries local and all country inflation data, clarifies that for this round it will not include price data for Argentina, among other exceptions.

“For Argentina, the fiscal and inflation variables were excluded from the publication for the 2021-25 and 2020-25 projections, respectively, as these are largely linked to the programme negotiations that are still pending,” the report says. Argentina is in the middle of negotiations to reach a new agreement with the Fund, and a mission of the agency was in the country between 6 October and 11 October recently, analysing the Argentine situation.