LatinNews Daily - 30 June 2023

* Argentina’s government led by President Alberto Fernández has announced that it will pay its next instalment of US$2.7bn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with which it is renegotiating a US$44bn agreement, in Chinese yuan as well as using the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) reserve asset. The announcement is the latest sign of efforts by the Fernández government to address an acute shortage of US dollar reserves. Argentina’s central bank (BCRA) has also announced that it would allow the country’s commercial banks to open customer accounts in yuan. The move follows last week’s approval by Argentina’s securities regulator, Comisión Nacional de Valores (CNV), to permit the issuance of securities in the local market that settle in yuan. At the start of the month Argentina’s economy minister Sergio Massa returned from a trip to China, having won some respite for the beleaguered domestic economy in the form of a rollover of the 130bn yuan (US$18.4bn) currency swap agreement between the two central banks for another three years. Crucially, this also doubled the portion of the swap freely accessible to Argentina from 35bn to 70bn yuan.