IMF programs do not promote growth or development

Despite the lack of growth targets, the IMF and the government have agreed on a three-year payout plan to allow Argentina to repay the most important loan granted by this institution from its history and, of course, the most important in the history of our country. Between 2021 and 2023, Argentina will have to pay the IMF 50,000 million US dollars (nearly 38,000 million special drawing rights, the unit used by the IMF). In 2023, the largest payment is concentrated: $ 23,300 million, or 47% of the total loan in a single year. If payments are added for the rest of the debt issued by this government, between 2020 and 2023, they exceed 150,000 million US dollars.

A plan without development and such a short payment plan require looking for fast sources of currency generation. For this government, one solution would be to continue to issue debt in foreign currency, but the risk of the neighboring country of 1,000 points would not allow it; Another solution would be to generate positive exportable balances, regardless of job creation or the local value added of each export branch. One way to make the strategy for obtaining such short-term dollars viable would be for this government to have a positive trade balance with commodities export, fast-moving, low value, and additional complexity, with declining imports as a result. equipment goods. The increase in unemployment and the decline in real wages allow the first and the closing of factories allows it. March 2019 trade reflects this strategy: Imports dropped by 34% in the recession compared with the same month of the previous year, while exports dropped 5%. the government to post a positive balance of $ 1,200 million. The path chosen by the Alliance Change for Foreign Exchange is the recession and primarization of our economy, abandoning our industry and our science and technology to corrosion, inevitable rust due to abandonment and pbadage of time.

The resignation of our industrial body confronts us with a commercial exchange of imports with high added value and low complexity exports, with a generation of jobs insufficient to integrate the demography that we, the Argentineans, generate. in the work system. The panorama will be darker with the abandonment of our scientific development, which will be so damaged by this management. The production of knowledge, design, innovation and their dialogue with industry and the agricultural sector constitute the new form of production that we have to face, because production and work are always at the center of the society. Only a state with the capacity to create this dialogue between sectors will be able to replace our country from those dark days with others that generate quality jobs that ensure social well-being. This will require resources that should not come from foreign currency debt and which, unfortunately, will not initially give us our external balance. Strong dialogue must extend reserve repayment periods with a grace period allowing us to return to self-determination and the path of progress and development.

(*) Former Minister of the Economy of the Province of Buenos Aires