BUENOS AIRES: Argentina will repay $5.9 billion of its debt on Monday in keeping with its repayment schedule, the country’s economy minister said Friday.

“We will follow this deadline as we have done for years. It is the largest payment in one instalment in a decade,” Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said.

The payment will be made by drawing on the country’s foreign exchange reserves, which showed a balance of $32.5bn Friday. “We will pay, all in good time, and Argentina will continue on the path of debt reduction.”

A longstanding dispute over the debt with US hedge funds remains, however.

Since its economic collapse in 2001, Argentina, the third-largest Latin American economy, has renegotiated its debt with 93 per cent of its creditors, but a handful of US-based hedge funds have held out for full repayment and refused debt restructuring.

A US court decision requires Argentina to repay those creditors in full, which Buenos Aires has called extortion by a group of “vulture funds.”

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2015

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