IMF wants Argentina-Paris Club deal without Fund
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 11 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund hopes Argentina and the Paris Club will reach a repayment deal on $6.3 billion in defaulted debt without the Fund's involvement, Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.
"I hope we will be able to find a solution, and this is much more in the hands of the Paris Club than in mine, which will not involve the IMF at all," Strauss-Kahn told reporters in Buenos Aires in an interview on Monday, the contents of which were held for publication until Tuesday.
He said the Fund would get involved in the stymied debt talks if the Paris Club of creditor nations sought IMF approval of a rescheduling plan agreed with Argentina.
Asked about Argentine media reports that the Article IV review of IMF members' economies could be used to facilitate a deal, Strauss-Kahn said: "I'm prepared to do my best to help Argentina ... but never in the past has the Article IV been considered by the Fund as a program, and there's no reason to change."
Under current Paris Club rules, a debt restructuring would require that Argentina sign up to an IMF program, which Buenos Aires is unwilling to do after paying off its IMF loans last year and freeing itself from politically unpopular audits.
Strauss-Kahn also said Argentina's new government, which took office on Monday, needs to improve inflation measurements since "obviously, for reasons everybody knows, the official index doesn't reflect exactly the way it goes."
Argentina's annual inflation is 8.5 percent, according to the INDEC national statistics institute, but most private analysts accuse the government of fudging the figures and put real inflation at between 15 percent and 20 percent.
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has denied any government tampering. (Reporting by Hilary Burke, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
