{"id":19948,"date":"2018-10-26T20:23:26","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T20:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19948"},"modified":"2018-10-26T20:23:26","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T20:23:26","slug":"imf-approves-56bn-loan-package-for-argentina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19948","title":{"rendered":"IMF approves $56bn loan package for Argentina"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)<\/span>\u00a0has approved a $56bn loan package for Argentina to help stabilise the crisis-battered country’s economy.<\/p>\n

The Washington-based body said on Friday that the approval released $5.7bn to the government of President Mauricio Macri\u00a0<\/span>immediately.<\/p>\n

In June, Argentina declared<\/a> it had reached an agreement with the IMF for a three-year, $50bn standby lending arrangement.<\/p>\n

The deal was aimed at providing breathing space for Macri’s government and reassuring investors in the face of growing concerns over a plunging currency and gaping fiscal deficit as well as skyrocketing inflation and pressing debt obligations.<\/p>\n

But Buenos Aires, which has already received $15bn, had to go back to the lender for additional support with faster disbursement.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n
\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n

WATCH: Argentina economic crisis is about more than inflation (2:41)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

With the latest installment, the IMF has released just over $20bn to Macri’s government. <\/p>\n

Argentina’s economic woes were brought on by a rapid loss of confidence in its currency from April.<\/p>\n

The peso has lost around 50 percent of its value against the dollar since the start of the year, including 20 percent in a two-day period in August after Macri announced he was seeking to renegotiate the IMF loan.<\/p>\n

He has since introduced a number of “emergency” measures,\u00a0\u00a0including cutting the number of government ministries by half and raising export taxes.<\/p>\n

Austerity budget<\/h2>\n

The IMF loan announcement came a day after Argentina’s lower house of Congress passed an unpopular austerity budget, which now goes to the Senate where it is expected to win final approval.<\/p>\n

The final pre-dawn vote came after a marathon, rancorous debate and a day of unrest that saw police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators throwing rocks outside the legislature to protest against a bitter cocktail of tax increases and spending cuts.<\/p>\n

Macri has pledged to enact a swathe of cuts in health, education, science, transportation, public works and culture to the tune of $10bn.<\/p>\n

The belt-tightening measures have seen Argentinians, many of whom blame the IMF’s policies for a devastating economic collapse in the early 2000s, take to the streets in recent months.<\/p>\n

In May, a survey of more than 1,000 people by Argentine pollsters D’Alessio Irol\/Berensztein revealed that 75 percent of respondents felt seeking assistance from the Washington, DC-based IMF was problematic.<\/p>\n

High inflation<\/h2>\n

Last year, Argentina’s budget deficit was 3.9 percent of gross domestic product (<\/span>GDP). The government aims to get it down to 2.7 percent in 2018 and zero by the end of next year.<\/p>\n

Argentina’s finance ministry has said the agreement with the IMF’s executive board includes a commitment to maintain spending on social programmes to more than 1.2 percent of GDP in order to protect the most vulnerable sectors.<\/p>\n

More than 27 percent of the population are listed as living below the poverty line while unemployment stands at 9.6 percent.<\/p>\n

The IMF estimates the economy will contract by 2.6 percent this year with inflation of almost 32 percent.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n
\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n

WATCH: Argentina’s currency woes deepen crisis | Counting the Cost (25:00)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)\u00a0has approved a $56bn loan package for Argentina to help stabilise the crisis-battered country’s economy. The Washington-based body said on Friday that the approval released $5.7bn to the government of President Mauricio Macri\u00a0immediately. In June, Argentina declared it had reached an agreement with the IMF for a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}