Martín Guzmán will meet with multinational executives to clear up doubts and explain the agreement with the IMF

Once again the grill on the terrace of the Ministry of Economy will have guests. After a long day, like yesterday, when he went to the Chamber of Deputies commission to defend the bill in agreement with the IMF, Economy Minister Martín Guzmán will receive executives from multinationals operating in the country.

Although the formal axis of the meeting will have to do with issues related to technological development and science – the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Daniel Filmus, will be present – ​​the debate on the negotiation with the Fund and the progress of the legislative debate will be in the middle of lunch. The Minister of Productive Development Matías Kulfas will also participate.

From the business sector will be Antonio Aracre, CEO of Syngenta; Sergio Kauffman, CEO of Accenture, businessman and mathematician Sebastián Ceria; Gabriela Renaudo, from Visa; and Federico Trucco, CEO of Bioceres. Ceria, 56, is a graduate in Mathematics from the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the UBA with a doctorate in Applied Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University, who has lived abroad for more than 30 years. He was the one who donated the money to carry out the recently inaugurated intelligent building Zero + Infinity, from his former faculty.

“It is a meeting of entrepreneurs linked to knowledge, such as the bioeconomy, financial services, software and some scientists from Conicet. The idea is to talk about the importance that the agreement with the IMF will have for an industry like ours, which exports knowledge, which wants to continue doing so and which has more and more weight in Argentina’s exports. We are the industry that has the most potential, which has been growing a lot, with job creation and sales abroad”, detailed one of the businessmen who will be present.

“They are part of the usual meetings that the minister has in recent months with the private sector,” they added from Economy. “There will be the talk of agreement, the vision of businessmen will be heard, who know that Argentina is growing and that there is potential for investment,” they stressed.

In the previous meeting, last January, trade unionists had also participated, such as Héctor Daer, Jorge Sola, Andrés Rodríguez and Antonio Caló, and the central issue was also the IMF. And also the Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Julián Domínguez, and the head of the Social Development portfolio, Juan Zabaleta.

Congress

Yesterday the minister was in Congress. “It is our responsibility to highlight the potentially destabilizing situation if Argentina faces if the 2018 debt is not refinanced. We face paths that fork, it is a serious problem. This is a step solution and this is a very important one. The agreement that the Government brings today establishes a passable path, ”he assured.

He also said that not approving the agreement will generate “profound stress” on the exchange rate, something that would have consequences for economic activity, inflation, unemployment and poverty.

“The alternative is a growth of uncertainty and it does not result in anything better. On the contrary, it will generate a situation of deep exchange rate stress with inflationary consequences, economic activity, employment and poverty ”, he added.

On a very long day, Guzmán had crossed with opposition deputies, such as Luciano Laspina and Martín Tetaz.

“The agreement that you signed is not an international treaty. It is your absolute and exclusive power. He wants to make us partners in an inevitable adjustment because in the last two years he ran out of financing. He wants to associate the opposition with an adjustment that you cannot avoid,” said Laspina.

“The IMF is not just any creditor. What it is supposed to do is provide support to a country when it has a balance of payment problem, not support a government. Conceptually, what is sought is for Argentina to act as a nation state, ”replied the minister. And he was very harsh in criticizing the dollarized calculation that Cambiemos makes on the public debt in pesos:“I have experience as an academic, as a teacher, contact with peers, with public policymakers. It is difficult for me to find a situation in which such a conceptual weakness is exhibited, such as when they convert pesos and speak of indebtedness in dollars”.

Tetaz, meanwhile, inquired about the future price of LNG gas and Guzmán replied that he had the “crystal ball” to find out. “Of the 40 questions you are not answering me anything,” insisted the radical legislator Tetaz. “If you read the program you will see that the segmentation that is intended to be executed on June 1 is being defined. He asks me a question that is not relevant because it is not being asked today. To define a price, you have to know what the costs are in which the price is defined, which includes those costs,” replied Guzmán.

Today, a priori, with the businessmen, the climate will be more pleasant.