Thursday, February 25, 2016

Prat Gay cautious on negotiations with holdouts

One day after a lawyer for key holdout creditors suing Argentina in US courts over defaulted bonds said the parties agreed on the broad terms of a settlement Finance Minister Alfonso Prat Gay expressed caution regarding negotiations.

“I cannot claim victory yet. We are very cautious with what we do, we are convinced about what we are doing but we know it’s difficult to balance,” he told a financial forum in Shanghai, ahead of a G20 meeting of finance ministers he will attend tomorrow.

Prat Gay considered the presented offers are “fair” and reiterated the government’s commitment to solve the debt dispute.

"Macri’s determination is to leave this behind,” he underlined pointing at the previous administration: “Not solving this problem represented a cost for Argentina of 2 million job posts.”

He continued to call for a revision of contract conditions and legal frameworks of debt bonds and said he will seek to reform the Central Bank’s regulations to guarantee its independence.