February 26, 2002	Tuesday	Zilhaj 13, 1422

LONDON, Feb 25: The International Monetary Fund will not start talks on new loans for Argentina before the country presents plans which will allow the bankrupt nation to implement a sustainable economic policy, IMF Deputy Managing Director Anne Krueger told Reuters on Monday.

Speaking on the sidelines of a conference on the euro Krueger said it was not in Argentina’s interest to get new funding at present.

“The fiscal arrangements have to get back to a more sustainable situation,” Krueger said, adding that Argentina also needed to sort out issues related to exchange rate conversions, bankruptcy laws and the bank sector as well as a programme relating to debt management after the largest bankruptcy in history.

“There is no point in lending more money at this stage,” she said.

However, once Argentina has a credible plan, the IMF will be ready to support the country and could do so rapidly “if and when we enter negotiations”, Krueger said.

Emigration: Some 140,000 Argentines have emigrated to escape the country’s worsening economic conditions between 2000-2001, according to Monday’s Pagina 12 newspaper.

In January this year alone, some 23,000 Argentines, most of them young people, left the country, the paper said.

Long queues of people have appeared outside the Spanish, Italian and US embassies here in search of visas or passports.

The United States announced last week it would require Argentines to obtain visas before travelling, as it dropped the country from a programme that allows nationals from nearly 30 countries to visit without permission.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at the time the decision was made because the deteriorating economic conditions in Argentina had increased the chances that Argentines would remain in the United States illegally.

After 44 months of recession, Argentina has a record unemployment rate of 22 per cent, and almost half of 36 million Argentines — 47 per cent — live in poverty.—Reuters/AFP