'If we don't solve the debt conflict, we won't grow again'

Revenue and Finance Minister addresses a Lower House meeting to defend the accord reached with so called "vulture" funds.

Revenue and Finance Minister Alfonso Prat Gay was addressing a meeting of the Lower House committees of Budget and Finance, both of them presided by PRO party lawmakers Luciano Laspina and Eduardo Amadero respectively.

“If we don’t resolve this, which affected several governments, we are not resolving something that stops us from growing again,” Prat Gay said in the beginning of his message of MPs. “We have to resolve it the best way possible.”

Prat Gay was seeking to rally support on a bill to repeal the two laws that are preventing the enactment of an agreement with holdout creditors after 14 years of litigation.

Today’s was 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 expects 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.