(Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will discuss a new $20 billion loan for Argentina during an informal meeting next week, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
The IMF will discuss a four-year extended fund facility of about 15 billion Special Drawing Rights, the report said.
A spokesperson for the IMF declined comment on the report. The Argentine government did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Argentina’s lower house on Wednesday passed a decree issued earlier in the month supporting a new IMF program, allowing the government to begin talks with the IMF to bolster central bank reserves and potentially undo capital controls.
The decree, while not specifying the amount in dollars, said that the planned extended fund facility would involve a repayment period of 10 years with a grace period of four years and six months. It added that the new funds would be used to pay off Treasury debt with the central bank.
Argentina, which is battling with negative net foreign currency reserves after years of over-spending, currency crises and regular defaults, is the IMF’s biggest borrower with 22 loan programs to date. It is still repaying a 2022 $44 billion deal.
IMF Spokesperson Julie Kozack on March 6 told a news conference that the IMF was “continuing to make good progress toward a program, and we are working constructively with the Argentine authorities in this regard.”
Once those negotiations are completed, any final loan arrangement would require the approval of the IMF Executive Board.
But the IMF’s procedures for “exceptional access” – higher loan amounts that exceed a country’s normal borrowing limits – require more upfront Executive Board involvement.
This includes consultations between IMF staff and the board “before concluding discussions on a program and making any public statement on a proposed level of access,” the procedures say.
(Reporting by Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
