Argentina repays part of its debt to the IMF with Chinese yuan

First modification: 06/30/2023 – 17:43

By our correspondent in Buenos Aires, Natalia Cosoy.

Argentina uses yuan, the Chinese currency, for the first time to pay a maturity with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

With the Chinese currency, Argentina covers a part of the 2,700 million dollars that it had to pay this Friday, June 30.

The rest is paid in special drawing rights, the basket of currencies that the IMF uses for its transactions, and that the country has for the disbursements it received from the agency.

Argentina decided to pay in this way for the greatly diminished international dollar reserves of its Central Bank.

And why with yuan?

Argentina has an agreement, a type of loan, with China, called a swap, for the equivalent of 20,000 million dollars in yuan. Of that total, you can freely use half.

Added to the disbursement to the IMF, in recent months, Argentina has been increasing payments in Chinese currency for imports from that country.

This week the Central Bank authorized Argentine banks to open yuan accounts.

All of this is evidence of China’s growing role as a global financier and the prominence that the yuan is gaining in the field of trade and international relations.