During his August 31st, 2004 ten-hour, self-invited visit to Argentina, IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato told President Néstor Kirchner: “At the IMF we have a problem called Argentina ”. Kirchner promptly replied: “I have a problem called 15 million poor people”, a clear reference to what Kirchner considers the outcome of decades of mistaken IMF policy prescriptions in Argentina.1
This frigid exchange is an indicator that the relationship between Argentina and the IMF is not going smoothly. In fact, the three-year agreement with the Fund, signed in September of 2003,2 is in limbo. In what has become a regular event, the IMF delayed approval of the third quarterly review of the agreement due in July, alleging that Argentina had not complied with certain structural reforms.
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