By Hugh Bronstein and Nicolás Misculin

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s authorities plans to agree on its new multiyear financial plan with Worldwide Financial Fund employees earlier than sending the proposal to Congress, Economic system Minister Martin Guzman mentioned on native radio on Friday.

“First, we’ll search to succeed in an settlement with IMF employees, after which it will likely be despatched to Congress for ratification,” the minister mentioned in feedback to native station Radio Con Vos.

Earlier within the day, a authorities supply, who requested to not be named, outlined the identical plans in an interview with Reuters. The IMF didn’t reply to a request for remark.

After getting walloped in a latest midterm congressional election, the administration of President Alberto Fernandez is going through political headwinds as common Argentines wrestle with excessive poverty charges and inflation of greater than 50% a yr that has gutted their spending energy.

Guzman instructed the radio interviewer that no abrupt devaluation of the native peso foreign money was being deliberate, regardless of rampant market hypothesis on the contrary because the native peso has weakened 20.4% during the last 12 months.

The Argentine authorities would additionally wish to resolve the rollover of $45 billion in excellent debt owed to the IMF this yr, Guzman added.

President Fernandez, whose Peronist coalition must win again voters forward of 2023 presidential elections, has vowed to not minimize authorities spending in a approach that will derail Argentina’s restoration from a protracted recession exacerbated final yr by the COVID-19 pandemic.

After gaining IMF employees approval, the financial plan shall be debated in a Congress with opposition events emboldened by their sturdy displaying within the midterm vote.

“All the ruling coalition is aligned with a imaginative and prescient of how this downside is to be solved. We search an settlement, however not simply any settlement; an settlement that permits Argentina to proceed on the trail of restoration,” Guzman instructed Radio Con Vos.

The federal government forecasts progress of greater than 9% this yr after the financial system shrank 9.9% in 2020.

The federal government, unable to make funds that subsequent yr complete virtually $19 billion, has been locked in talks with the IMF since final yr to push again $45 billion left over from a failed mortgage settlement in 2018 underneath former President Mauricio Macri.