By means of this Agreement, renewable energy receives a USD480-million stimulus with the World Bank Guarantee.
The Minister of Energy and Mining, Juan J. Aranguren, and the Ministry of Finance, Luis Caputo, signed this afternoon the Indemnity Agreement with the World Bank (WB) for the “Guarantee Program for the Fund for the Development of Renewable Energy (FODER, for its acronym in Spanish)”.

Within the context of said Program, the Guarantee Agreement was signed between the World Bank, represented by Jesko Hentschel, and the Bank of Investment and Foreign Trade (BICE), represented by its President Pablo Garcia, as trustee of the Trust Fund for the Development of Renewable Energy (FODER).

This way, the World Bank Guarantee enters into force for USD 480 million with up to 20-year periods for each one of the 27 projects of Rounds 1 and 1.5 of RenovAr Program that have requested it: 12 wind power projects (721 MW), 10 photovoltaic solar energy projects (306 MW), 4 small hydroelectric power projects (4 MW) and 1 biogas project (1 MW).

The Guarantee is part of the Executive Order No. 605/2017 signed on August 3 by which the Indemnity Agreement was approved and the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Energy and Mining were vested with the power to represent Argentina.

The approval of the guarantee was announced on March 1 by the World Bank Board of Directors.
For more information on Rounds 1 and 1.5 of RenovAr Program please visit:

http://scripts.minem.gob.ar/octopus/archivos.php?file=7013

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will grant financing to the country in order to continue with the improvement of the official statistics published by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC, for its acronym in Spanish) and to support a program of transparency, integrity and corruption control.

The projects financed by the IDB are part of the joint work between the international organization and the Ministry of Finance, which main purpose is to make progress in terms of transparency of the information gathered by INDEC and in the fight against corruption.

For the first initiative, USD 50 million will be used for the improvement of official statistics, increasing their credibility. The IDB project aims at promoting the use of the information by the National Government, the citizenship and the private sector.

This way, the gap between provisional and final economic indicators will narrow, reducing the non-answer rate in surveys by sampling, increasing the coverage of the economic and housing censuses and reducing the time between the conduction of the survey and the publication of the results. In order to achieve it, new technologies, methodologies and statistical infrastructure will be applied to improve the information production process.

Likewise, activities will be financed to strengthen INDEC’s institutional capacity, as well as activities to promote transparency and access to information, update sociodemographic and economic statistical databases and improve the coordination between INDEC and the other organizations belonging to the National Statistical System.

For the Support to Transparency and Integrity Reforms Program USD 200 million were obtained. The initiative is part of the National Government’s decision to strengthen standards in line with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The implementation of this agenda foresees key reforms in the access to public information and the ethical conduct of public officials; the management of resources in works, recruitment and Government personnel; and the management of the financial sector.

In order to strengthen transparency, the project establishes actions for the management of public resources in terms of public work recruitment and public employment, in particular through the implementation of the electronic management system for Recruitment and Concessions for Public Work, CONTRATAR and the implementation and execution of a comprehensive system for the management and administration of personnel (Human Resources Administration System – SARHA).

Actions to increase effectiveness of the financial system and to reduce transaction costs will be also implemented, thus strengthening financial transparency based on the adoption of measures that go in line with FATF and international rules and regulations regarding financial information.

August 3, 2017

The development of the new tools to promote mortgage credit was the main item on the agenda at the meeting held this afternoon by the Minister of Finance, Luis Caputo, and the Secretary of Financial Services, Leandro Cuccioli, with the Presidents of Banco Nacion, Javier Gonzalez Fraga, Banco Provincia, Juan Curuchet and Banco Ciudad, Javier Ortiz Batalla.

During the meeting, the Ministry of Finance’s team and the public banks representatives analyzed the mortgage credit progress and studied the challenges to overcome in order to satisfy the boom of the demand.

August 2, 2017

The Minister of Finance, Luis Caputo, met this afternoon with the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the U.K., Philip Hammond. The Chief of Cabinet of the Ministry of Finance, Pablo Quirno; the Secretary of Finance, Santiago Bausili; the Secretary of Financial Services, Leandro Cuccioli; and the President of the Financial Information Unit (UIF, for its acronym in Spanish), Mariano Federici, also attended the meeting.

During said meeting, both officials talked about the intention of British enterprises to participate in the infrastructure investment through the Public-Private Participation (PPP) scheme.

In that sense, Caputo said: “This meeting is taking place in a new Argentina, which is regaining its position at the international scenario and which offers big investment opportunities for the development of its infrastructure”.

Hammond and Caputo talked about the importance of preventive actions against money laundering and financing of terrorism developed by the Financial Information Unit (UIF).

In addition, they mentioned the possibility of having their insurance market regulators cooperating with each other.

The Ministry of Finance’s team explained to the British delegation the efforts done by the Argentine Insurance Authority to update regulatory practices in the insurance sector and highlighted the importance of the information exchange with the U.K.

Before the meeting, both officials attended the working lunch offered by Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Faurie at which the Minister of Treasury, Nicolas Dujovne, was also present.

During the afternoon, the officials of the Ministry of Finance participated in a working meeting with British businessmen at Palacio San Martín. There, the Chief of Cabinet, Pablo Quirno, talked about initiatives of Public-Private Participation projects; the Secretary of Finance, Santiago Bausili, talked about the financial program of the country; and the Director of the Argentine Insurance Authority, Juan Pazo and the Vice-director, Guillermo Plate, talked about the investment opportunities offered by the insurance sector.

President Mauricio Macri receiving the British Minister marks a historic moment: it is the first visit to Argentina by a U.K. cabinet member since 1993. The meeting is part of the new bilateral relation evidenced in a joint statement signed by both Governments in September 2016.