Former IMF director Alejandro Werner says Argentina will not pay the IMF

Alejandro Werner, former head of the Western Hemisphere Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), affirmed that Argentina “is not going to pay” the Fund and that any agreement between the two will be a “temporary patch” that will only delay a bank run in that country .

“Argentina is not going to pay the IMF. Argentina is not going to do good macro-micro institutional policies, ”said Werner, who was head of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department for almost a decade before leaving office in August.

Argentina is negotiating a program to replace a failed one of 2018 that left it as the largest debtor of the IMF by far, with some US $ 45,000 million in obligations. If the current agreement is not modified, next year it will have to make payments of about US $ 19,000 million.

Werner, in an event on the economic future of Latin America organized by the Forum of Official Monetary and Financial Institutions, pointed out that “we are exaggerating the IMF program, because at most it is going to be a temporary patch to maintain expectations and delay the bank run for four months. Then everything will be resolved, because look at these guys. What are you going to expect from this government?

Earlier this year, Werner, who was still at the IMF, said there appeared to be significant differences of opinion among President Alberto Fernández’s allies on what direction to take economic policy and where to take the negotiations with the Fund.

“The best thing that can happen with an IMF program is that we will have four months in which they will go through a review and that’s it,” Werner said.

“We will return to arrears or near arrears. In the end, it will not be an instrument for good policies and from the flow side, nothing will change ”, he added.

Neither the IMF nor the Argentine government immediately responded to requests for comment.

An Argentine government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the high sensitivity of the matter, said: “It is strange to see a former IMF official make comments like these so soon after leaving the Fund.”