Friday, March 4, 2016

Finance Minister defends 'vultures' bill in Congress

Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay today attended the Lower House to brief lawmakers over a bill to repeal two laws that are preventing the enactment of an agreement with holdout creditors after 14 years of litigation.

The Executive sent to the Lower House late last night the bill and Prat Gay was defending it before a plenary session.

The meeting was being presided by the head of the Budget Commitee Luciano Laspina and of the Finance Committe Eduardo Amadeo and is the first one of a series of meetings to be held to discuss the deal with holdout creditors. On Monday, economists and opposition leaders will give their opinion. The government will seek to clear the bill for debate on Tuesday. 

The bill is set to strike down key elements in the Sovereign Payment and the Padlock laws — both of which ban the government from paying the holdouts more than it offered to the creditors of restructured debt who took part in the 2005 and 2010 debt swaps.

United States District Judge Thomas Griesa agreed this week to lift the injunctions against Argentina and now the country has until April 14 to come up with the money to pay the debt settlements and repeal both laws. If that fails to happen, the holdouts are entitled to terminate the deal