Argentina, IMF restore regular checkups after decade

Argentina will resume annual fiscal checkups with the International Monetary Fund this year after a 10-year hiatus, an IMF official said Friday.

The move marks a repairing of relations that soured in the wake of the country's default on $100 billion in debt in 2001.

Ties between the two hit rock-bottom when the IMF censured Buenos Aires in 2013 for not meeting an IMF requirement that members must provide reliable, basic economic statistics.

"It looks like we are going to go for two weeks in September," said Nigel Chalk, the Fund's deputy director for the Americas.

The Fund will restart its Article IV missions, in which it assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the economies of each member country every year.

"It's a very normal process that we do with every other country," Chalk said.

The team "will discuss with the central bank, the government, also with civil society and the private sector to see what is going on."

The shift comes after the sweeping economic policy changes of President Mauricio Macri, who took office in December after a long period of IMF-hostile Argentine governments.

Macri has moved to repay defaulted debt and implement market-friendly reforms, as well as replacing the country's statistics chief with someone more credible.

Under the previous government of Cristina Kirchner, the government regularly issued data that showed economic growth far higher and inflation far lower than mainstream economists believed.