More dollars for the government: the World Bank lends an additional $ 500 million

In times of relative calm of the dollar on the foreign exchange market and when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is preparing to make a new disbursement under the Stand-By Program (SBA) that it has with the country for 57,000 Millions of US dollars, the World Bank announced that after the approval of its board of directors, it had released an additional $ 500 million for the country.

The international bank said in a statement that the funds "would support Argentina in its economic recovery process to promote inclusive growth led by the private sector". This loan, they said, completes budget support of $ 1,000 million, of which the first disbursement was made in November 2018.

"In order to protect the most vulnerable households, we seek to mitigate inflationary effects by maintaining the power to purchase social programs such as Universal Allocation for Children (AUH), and we continue to support efforts to provide health services in the provinces, "said Jesko Hentschel, director of the World Bank for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay in his statement.

In the same way, the IMF's board of directors will meet tomorrow to badyze the case of Argentina and unblock another disbursement in favor of Argentina for an amount of $ 5,400 million. It is the penultimate of this year. For that same amount, there would be another tour of the body headed by David Lipton in September.

Last week, the interim director publicly expressed support for the program with Argentina and said the economy was recovering and inflation was slowing.

From the World Bank, they gave technical details on the loan that will arrive in the country. They indicated that US $ 500 million in programmatic development financing policies constituted a variable margin, repayable in 32 years and had a grace period of seven years.

In government, they celebrated the funding. "The World Bank has approved funding of US $ 500 million for the second phase of the development policy agenda for inclusive growth, aligned with the macroeconomic stabilization agenda and within the framework of the national government's priority objectives," he said. they indicated. from the Ministry of Finance also in a statement.

"The operation will be carried out under the terms of a programmatic loan for development policy support, which consists of a rapid disbursement instrument to provide budget support to priority reforms in the countries, including: The main objective is to improve the standard of living of the country of departure, the strengthening of private-led growth foundations, the strengthening of social safety nets and the improvement of social security. 39, tax equity, "they said.

The program approved by the World Bank, presented to the government, is structured in two pillars. The first provides for measures that address "distortions" and "level playing field" for private sector led growth based on the creation of domestic and foreign companies. "Competition, trade, the emergence of new businesses, access to financing and development of the renewable energy sector will be promoted," said the Ministry of Finance without further details.

"The second pillar will generate actions that will contribute to strengthening the social protection system and improving tax fairness in order to protect the most vulnerable segments of the population, by maintaining social badistance spending and by affecting where appropriate, additional resources for financing more effective badistance programs, "they said. In this case, the Treasury pointed out that it would seek to "protect the real value" of the benefits of Universal Child Benefit (AUH).

"It also plans to address the fragmentation of health and social protection systems to ensure effective and efficient access to the most vulnerable, while reducing duplication and management costs by acting as effective automatic stabilizers". have completed, to the same extent, the portfolio led by Nicolás Dujovne.