VERSIÓN ESPAÑOL Favorecer Más Inversión Ahora que se confirmó que el socialista francés Dominique Strauss-Kahn será el nuevo director gerente del Fondo Monetario Internacional, será interesante ver qué actitud toma la Argentina hacia el FMI, entre los dos extremos de la total irrelevancia de los últimos 20 meses (desde que el gobierno de Néstor Kirchner canceló por completo los 9.500 millones de dólares de deuda con el FMI) y la obsesión devoradora de las dos décadas anteriores. Lea más

Now that the French socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been confirmed as the new director-general of the International Monetary Fund, it will be interesting to see what attitude Argentina takes towards the IMF between the two extremes of the complete irrelevance of the last 20 months (ever since the Néstor Kirchner administration paid off its 9.5-billion-dollar debt in full) and the all-consuming obsession with the IMF of the previous two decades. The IMF has been less absent than usual from Argentine radar screens in recent weeks because the need to settle the Paris Club debt of 6.3 billion dollars has at last sunk into government circles — Argentina urgently needs infrastructural and other investments and neither domestic capital nor the local savings rate can provide the necessary sums. Within this context the ruling party’s candidate to run Argentina in the next four years, first lady Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (who has visited Germany, the chief Paris Club creditor, in the last three weeks) has made a point of taking Strauss-Kahn under her wing — even though his only rival, the ex-Communist Czech Josef Tosovsky, might well have been ideologically closer to the Kirchner administration.
Yet it remains to be seen whether all ways of settling the Paris Club debt lead to the IMF — there has been more flexibility on this point in recent weeks, not least from the Paris Club even though its statutes dictate that any agreement on the scale envisaged by Argentina must be approved by the IMF. But the increased flexibility is not only on the creditor side — there is talk that Argentina’s Paris Club debt might be settled at least in part out of IMF credits in an implicit restoration of relations. This would be a long overdue return to its senses on the part of the Kirchner administration because IMF credits come on infinitely easier terms than the debt bonds purchased by Argentina’s pseudo-benefactor, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Indeed freeing Argentina from its Chávez dependence should be another good reason for the creditors to offer more concessions, quite apart from the prospect of receiving their money back.
The Victory Front party of the Kirchners can rightly be accused of exalting triumph as an end in itself ahead of any other aims but on this occasion choosing the winning side in the person of Strauss-Kahn can be described as being as much in the country’s interests as those of the government.