Argentina

Argentina to repay debt to Paris Club creditors

Tuesday 02 September 2008

Argentina's president Cristina Kirchner gave instructions to the Central Bank to use its available reserves to pay off its 6.7 billion dollar debt to Paris Club creditors who helped Argentina following its 2001 economic crisis.

Argentina will pay off its debt of 6.7 billion dollars owed to the Paris Club of international creditors, President Cristina Kirchner said Tuesday.
  
"I have instructed my Economy Minister (Carlos Fernandez) to use the available Central Bank reserves to pay off the debt to the Paris Club," the Argentine president said.
  
The Paris Club includes the United States, Japan and other members of the Group of Seven economic powers, which crafted a financial bailout of the formerly bankrupt South American country following its economic crisis of 2001.
  
The move comes as Kirchner attempts to put the country's finanical house right, after years of economic disorder.
  
The economy remains troubled however with the rate of inflation among the highest in South America -- about 20 percent .
  
Last year Argentina reimbursed a 9.5 billion dollar debt to the International Monetary Fund, five years after the dramatic default that triggered the worst economic crisis in the country's history and plunged more than half of Argentina's population into poverty.
  
The IMF repayment under the current president's predecessor and husband, president Nestor Kirchner, marked a symbolic end to the period of economic crisis and indebtedness triggered by Argentina's unprecedented 2001 default.
  
Argentina has had sharp disagreements with the IMF about its policy prescriptions, and has accused the Fund of imposing excessively harsh conditions.