Creditors have criticized the current Argentine government of the country for what it describes as erratic economic policies claiming they are impeding growth and weighing on bond prices five months after the government restructured some US$ 65 billion in foreign bonds.
Argentina’s debt markets were rattled on Thursday after bond restructuring talks with creditors appeared to stall, pushing the country’s risk spread up sharply over safe-haven U.S. Treasuries, a sign of investors growing cautious.
Argentine sovereign and provincial bonds dipped on Wednesday as the provincial government in Buenos Aires was forced to extend a deadline for creditors to agree or reject a plan to delay a US$ 250 million bond repayment originally due on Jan. 26.
A group of Argentina’s biggest bondholders will meet with the country’s treasury minister in New York this Monday to hear how Latin America’s third-largest economy plans to dig itself out of its latest debt crisis.
By Carmen Reinhart (*) Argentina recently emerged from nearly 15 years of the most litigious sovereign default in modern times, if not ever. Now it has the opportunity to reenter the global financial system and build a more stable and prosperous future. It is a chance that the country must be careful not to squander.
Argentina announced on Tuesday the largest emerging market debt sale on record with a global offering of 16.5bn dollars at an average interest rate of 7.14%, well below what it had planned in March in the midst of negotiations to end litigations with holdout funds opening the way, after fifteen years, for the return to world money markets. Underwriters received 68.5bn dollars in orders for bonds, more than four times the value of the debt.
Argentina marked a spectacular comeback to world money markets on Monday when its first bond issue in fifteen years attracted bids more than three times reaching US$ 67 billion. Argentina is after US$ 15bn which will help pay creditors on its ongoing litigation, since the country defaulted back in 2001.
A judge sided with Argentina in its debt standoff on Wednesday, agreeing to let orders protecting creditors expire so that large U.S. hedge funds and smaller entities and people can be paid at least US$6.2 billion to satisfy settlements reached over the last month.
Argentina and a group of hedge funds are nearing a deal that would pay investors about 70% of what they say they are owed, as the government moves closer to re-entering the global bond markets following its 2001 default.
Argentina is planning to issue an estimated 15bn dollars in bonds, with which to pay the bondholders involved in years of litigation, and thus abandon its default situation which impedes it from having access to global money markets. The news was released by the Argentine Ministry of Finance.