The Argentine economy will fall this year by 2.5%

2023-08-01 12:00:54

The Argentine economy will fall this year by 2.5%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which nevertheless hopes that the country can recover from this setback and grow 2.8% in 2024.

In the press conference to present the revision of its world economic forecasts, the Director of Research of the IMF, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchasrecognized that Argentina is “facing a very difficult situation” that has worsened due to the severe drought that the country has suffered.

The forecast for Argentina is much worse than the one the Fund published in April, when it still forecast slight growth of 0.2%.

The IMF economist Petya Koeva indicated, for her part, that inflation could reach 120% if the Government implements the necessary measures to reduce the rate to that point.

Argentina’s new forecasts are released two days after this country reached an understanding with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to review the objectives and goals of the Latin American country’s debt refinancing agreement, signed in March 2022.

According to the Argentine Ministry of Economy, “the central objectives and parameters have been agreed upon, which will be the basis for a ‘staff level agreement’ (agreement at the ‘staff’ level) that is expected to be finalized in the coming days and then move towards the review of the Argentine program.

In its report published today, the IMF has revised upwards its growth forecasts for Latin America and the Caribbean thanks to a higher-than-expected growth in the region’s largest economies, Brazil and Mexico.

In the revision of its world economic forecasts released this Tuesday, the IMF believes that Latin America will grow 1.9% in 2023, three tenths above what it predicted in April. For 2024, it maintains its forecast of 2.2% for the region as a whole.