BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - The Chamber of Deputies voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve a bill to restructure the Argentine government’s $100 billion debt, which officials say is unpayable amid a deep recession that has reawakened old fears of financial crises.
With the support of the main opposition parties, the government of President Alberto Fernández saw the measure pass 224-2 while leftist groups opposing the legislation protested outside congress.
The bill now goes to the Senate for debate next week.
The center-left government’s handling of the bill in a special session highlighted the importance it attaches to the South American country’s huge debt to the International Monetary Fund and private creditors.
Economy Minister Martín Guzmán has warned that Argentina needs “a sustainable solution” to paying its debt.
“Today the situation is critical, the debt burden cannot be sustained,” he said.
Argentina periodically faces financial crises and liquidity problems that have led it to refinance its debt. At the end of 2001, it declared a record default on just over $100 billion in debt during the worst economic crisis in its history. It is currently dealing with a contracting economy, high inflation and a weakened currency.
If enacted into law, the legislation would declare the sustainability of external public debt a “priority” and authorize the government to carry out a “restructuring of interest maturity services and capital amortization of public securities issued under foreign law.” It would give the executive branch power to determine the nominal amounts.
The legislative debate is taking place as the economy minister begins talks with the IMF to renegotiate the payment of some $44 billion transferred to Argentina under a 2018 credit agreement worth more than $56 billion. The talks will continue in February.
Carlos Heller, head of the Chamber of Deputies’ Committee on Budget and Finance, said before the start of Wednesday’s debate that there is a consensus on the need to renegotiate the debt. He recalled that the 2015-2019 government of conservative President Mauricio Macri acknowledged it was unpayable.
Macri’s opposition party, Together for Change, agreed to support the bill in exchange for creating a working table to analyze the sustainability of the debts that Argentina’s provinces have with the federal government.
Leftist lawmaker Nicolás de Caño criticized the pact between
the Fernández’s government and the opposition to “pay the fraudulent debt that Macri left us.”
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