Argentina

Argentina has been approached by financial institutions offering it loans at favorable rates, the economy ministry said on Sunday, marking a tentative reopening of international credit markets for the first time in over a decade, Reuters reported. The economy ministry issued a statement on Sunday, saying it had received offers of credit from abroad. It did not name the institutions. "In recent weeks ...

Funeral home director Carlos Bianchi's dilemma over how much to charge for his coffins goes a long way in illustrating the economic woes plaguing both Argentina and Venezuela, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Argentine government's currency devaluation last month, which helped spur a global selloff in emerging-market currencies, also sent prices soaring here. What confounds Mr. Bianchi's calculation is that he must use an unsteady and weakening currency, the peso, to buy imported parts for his wares.

Jorge Contrera checked a pair of soiled shoes from top to bottom, tried to buff them with his shirt sleeve, then paid 40 pesos ($5) for his 8-year-old daughter’s present. Before Argentina’s devaluation last month, he planned to surprise her with a new pair. “Do you know how I feel buying my daughter used shoes?” said 29-year-old Contrera, a welder who’s currently working as a delivery man.

Argentina's government allowed its beleaguered peso to slide farther against the U.S. currency on Friday, saying it would ease limits on the purchase of dollars to stem a possible currency crisis like the one that hammered the country in 2001-2002, The Wall Street Journal reported. Economists welcomed the moves, but doubted they would work without an attack on the real source of the country's mounting economic problems: rampant government spending and a loose money policy that has caused one of the world's highest rates of inflation, estimated at more than 25% a year.

A final accord on Argentina’s debt with the Paris Club group of creditors could take months to negotiate and wouldn’t place the country’s economic growth and social programs at risk, Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said, Bloomberg reported. Kicillof, presented a proposal to Paris Club Chairman Ramon Fernandez in the French capital yesterday. Officials from the group’s 19 countries will discuss the offer tomorrow, Kicillof said at a press conference in Buenos Aires today. He declined to give details of the plan.

What the US Supreme Court decides in a key court case involving Argentina and its bondholders will greatly impact how sovereign debt restructuring is done in the future, the BBC reported. The essence of the decade-long lawsuit between the country and a handful of its creditors is: Can bondholders demand full repayment of what they lent to a country even when others have settled for a haircut? Argentina's 2002 default of around $100bn (£61bn) was the largest at the time, until Greece's around 200bn euros debt restructuring.

The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider a landmark appeal by Argentina of a lower court's order to pay around $1.5 billion to two hedge funds, the Global Post reported on an Agence France-Presse story. But the decision did not end Argentina's avenues to challenge the 2012 ruling, supported in August on appeal, that it had to pay back all holders of its defaulted bonds, whether or not they took part in a restructuring of those bonds.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday took no action on an appeal by the government of Argentina in a closely watched sovereign-debt case, The Wall Street Journal reported. The high court added eight new cases to its docket Tuesday but made no mention of Argentina's appeal. The court could indicate as soon as next Monday what it plans to do with the case. At issue is Argentina's legal fight with holdout creditors that refused to accept the country's debt-restructuring offers after its historic default in 2001.

The thriving currency black market on postcard Florida Street in the commercial centre of Argentina’s capital is a result of strict foreign exchange controls introduced in 2011 to stem capital flight, the Financial Times reported. In the “caves”, dollars can be sold for close to double the official rate of 5.7 pesos. Argentina’s artificially overvalued currency is one of an array of economic problems facing Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, president.

Argentina's government will reopen a 2005 debt swap for a second time after an adverse ruling in a New York court last week, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move, unveiled by President Cristina Kirchner Monday, comes as the government deals with the fallout from a U.S court decision last week that ordered Argentina to pay a group of so-called holdout bondholders 100% of the roughly $1.33 billion they are owed in principal and accrued interest. The Kirchner administration has refused to pay the holdouts, saying they don't deserve 100% of what they are owed under U.S. law.