RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Spanish Secretary of State for Ibero-America and the Caribbean, Juan Fernández Trigo, said this Tuesday (26) in Rome that “Argentina needs to lift its head and the International Monetary Fund must be more sensitive to its economic difficulties in the renegotiation of its debt.”
In declarations to the international press in the days before the beginning of the G20 Heads of State Summit, the Spanish official affirmed that “certain circumstances must be taken into account and that the negotiation must be serious.”
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He also stressed that “the tensions that certain societies are going through cannot be increased; the IMF has to be sensitive to this situation: the Argentine society is going through a bad time, and it needs to lift its head.”
Within the 10th Italy-Latin America Conference held in the Italian capital, Fernández Trigo met with the Argentine Deputy Foreign Minister, Pablo Tettamanti. He conveyed the Spanish government’s support in the negotiations with the IMF.
During the meeting, the Spanish diplomat pointed out that “the region’s GDP has contracted by 7% due to the pandemic.”
The Iberian official regretted that “the health systems have not responded adequately to the health crisis, since social security is non-existent in many places and 40% of the Latin American population has no social protection whatsoever.”
The President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, will travel to Rome this weekend to participate in the summit of Heads of State of the Group of 20, where he is expected to hold bilateral meetings with his European peers, including the Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, to discuss the renegotiation of the debt with the IMF.