The return of the super minister Sergio Massa, with a first stop in China

He Premiere of the presidential plane ARG 01 it will put into flight the hope of Minister Sergio Massa of achieving the double objective of stabilizing the economy, in the face of market pressures, and of walking the electoral dream of a unity candidacy within the framework of the Frente de Todos. It happens that around 10:00 p.m., the brand new Boeing 705-200 will depart from the Buenos Aires City Metropolitan Airport, bound for China, which will transport a high-flying political and institutional entourage to participate in key summits in Shanghai and Beijing, which They will be made just after the landing of noon Tuesday hours on Chinese soil. With this trip, the head of the Palace of Finance will crown a two-week agenda full of messages and signs about his future at the polls.

Massa placed all the devices to start the electoral race at the starting point. First, he activated all the internal signals, with acts and photos on all fronts of the ruling party: the mass at the Buenos Aires Tedeum for May 25, together with President Alberto Fernández; the act with Vice President Cristina Kirchner; the inauguration of a tourist train in Buenos Aires, together with Minister Eduardo “Wado” De Pedro; the photo with Governor Axel Kicillof and the head of Aysa, Malena Galmarini; and the trip to China with the deputy and head of La Cámpora, Máximo Kirchner. Later, he put his entire work team, political and institutional, at the entrance of a campaign. Both gestures confirmed “he is excited”, as a source from his close environment recognized PROFILE.

Massa debuts the ARG-01 heading to China, in search of new business and a hand with the reserves

“There is an electoral operation prepared, but not yet activated,” the same source took advantage of. There is an important date before June 24 (at which time lists must be submitted to compete in the August primary elections) which will be the June 10 congress of the Frente Renovador. It is estimated that there will be no definition of the position of candidate that Massa will occupy, but other sources assured that by that moment there will be certainties about the unity or competition in the PASO of the ruling party, a point that could predestine the decision of the head of the Palace: head the presidential list or nothing. The journalistic version of the plan for the national senator is ruled out, according to sources close to him.

Mining, energy and agriculture, the governors’ agenda

The agenda for the first two days of Massa will be focused on the energy and mining sector. That is why, between Tuesday and Wednesday, the Secretary of Energy, Flavia Royón, and the President of Argentine Energy, Agustín Jeréz, will hold a series of meetings to “advance the energy matrix, in the works so that Argentina can export energy and go from being only an agro-exporting country, to also being an energy expo”, they maintained from the ministerial environment. “That is why we propose that our proposal is with growth and a value chain. And with establishment in the place. The construction of the Néstor Kirchner Gas Pipeline in record time demonstrates the momentum in the sector”, explained the source consulted.

In Shanghai there will be intense negotiations. The authorities of the Chinese Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC) company are waiting for him, for the execution of the dams of the Santa Cruz River; the representatives of the Power China Company, for the projects related to the energy development of the country; the businessmen of CET – State Grid, for the expansion of the electric power transmission system; and the leaders of the company Tibet Summit Resources, whom they will try to seduce to activate an investment in mining development and lithium extraction. The companies Ganfeng Lithium and Tsingshan Holding Group, both interested in investing in mining development, will also join.

A lot of inflation and few reserves are still the muddy objectives that Massa does not reverse

This energy and mining agenda, as well as the opening of new agricultural markets that will be in charge of the secretary Juan José Bahillo, will seek to provide answers to various proposals made by the league of governors, with the objective of federalizing the campaign, supported the success of the ruling parties in the first split electoral tests of the year. He dedicated a special chapter to the province of Buenos Aires, since he promised Kicillof that he would guarantee the implementation of the projects to finance infrastructure works for expansion of drinking water, sewage and energy networks in the Buenos Aires suburbs.

The double command: political and economic

The photo with Kicillof, one of the presidential cards that the ruling party has, was one more sign of the double political and economic command that Massa wants to show as a strength, despite the bad news coming from the inflationary front. On the fifth floor of the Palacio de Hacienda they recognized, in dialogue with PROFILE, that May will also be a complex month in terms of remarks and that the pace, with elections involved, will be “difficult” to correct. But he is confident that a change in the exchange front, with guaranteed reserves to pass 2023, will allow him to inject funds into the real economy, maintaining the pace of activity and instrument new relief for formalized and unregistered workers. The logic applied is to raise income so that inflation is less of a problem, in relation to the increase in purchasing power.

“Pay growing, because the dead do not pay”, is the phrase of Néstor Kirchner that Massa repeats and that she was summoned by Cristina Kirchner in the Plaza de Mayo, who entrusted the Minister of Economy to harden Argentina’s position before the International Monetary Fund, to change the debt repayment agreement. Three important officials who maintain the negotiating channel remained in Buenos Aires: the vice minister, Gabriel Rubinstein; the chief adviser, Leonardo Madcur; and the vice president of the Central Bank, Lisandro Cleri. The video calls that they maintain with the IMF staff will have, this week, as a backdrop the visit of Massa and Máximo Kirchner to the number one opponent that the United States has in the escalation of the global geopolitical fight. If you have successfully passed through China, financial independence can become a valuable card at the time of negotiation.

The president of the BCRA, Miguel Pesce, will also be in China. His presence became fundamental, because he is the one who maintains the relationship with his counterpart from Banco Popular Chino, Yi Gang, based on the agreements between Alberto Fernández and Xi Jinping, which were deepened by the Argentine ambassador in Beijing, Sabino Vaca Narvaja. . The head of the Central is one step away from building a financial bridge that will allow him to overcome the reserve crisis and thus be able to control the dislocations of the market against exchange rate stability, inflation involved.

Kirchnerism opens the fight for the lists to arm the resistance in case of defeat

Yuan reserves, the firepower sought by the BCRA

It happens that the global amount of the swap is 130,000 million renminbi yuan, of which 35,000 million (equivalent to USD 5,000 million) were freely available, so that the BCRA can intervene in the market or buy bonds. As I trust the sources around Pesce, to PROFILE, these disbursements, which came in five installments of USD 1,000 million, are deposited in a Central account and nothing has been touched from there yet. If it is expanded to another USD 3 billion, the Central Bank’s firepower will be comparable to a year’s worth of trade deficit with China. “That way, China would finance the trade deficit,” they said.

The plan is that the result of the negotiations of fruits in advance, and an agreement was sealed within the framework of this trip that had a renewal date for next August. A move that would allow Massa to respond to the internal ones of the Frente de Todos, since, although the interest rate of the swap with China is reserved, “the associated financial operations are lowered by half”, which would place them, even , below those of the IMF. This information will not go unnoticed in the talks with the Fund to make the repayment agreement more flexible, nor in the intervention of the United States, which had promised support for the advancement of the USD 10.600 million of the disbursements that remain to be made. send for the whole year, we will still see.

On the other hand, Alberto Fernández’s predisposition to grant Massa the premiere of the presidential plane, even though a large part of the entourage is linked to the most critical internal sectors of the national management. Precisely, the names that accompany him, with the outstanding figure of Máximo Kirchner, put him back in his role as super-minister, a nickname that he was able to earn when he arrived at the Ministry of Economy and stabilize a currency run, but now they can put in the condition of a tightrope walker within the ruling party and in an eventual presidential candidacy. At least the trip shows him strengthened.