The executive board of the International Monetary Fund approved on Wednesday the fifth and sixth reviews of its US$44 billion program with Argentina, allowing for the disbursement of $7.5 billion, according to the Argentine government.

“The IMF board approved the disbursement of $7.5 billion,” the Economy Ministry said in a statement.

The approval was announced as Economy Minister Sergio Massa and other representatives are in Washington D.C. for a series of meetings with the Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). On Tuesday afternoon, Massa announced that the World Bank and IDB will loan Argentina US$ 1.31 billion. The minister is set to meet with IMF head Kristalina Georgieva separately later on Wednesday.

Former president Mauricio Macri signed a loan of US$44 billion in 2018, the biggest in the IMF’s history at the time. The debt was renegotiated under President Alberto Fernández’s office, which reached an Extended Fund Facility program with the lender. This includes an economic program that Argentina must comply with to receive disbursements every three months, which the government uses to pay the previous debt. 

IMF staff and Argentina had reached an agreement late in July for the fifth and sixth reviews of the program, with the disbursement left pending board approval.

On July 31 the government paid a US$2.6 billion maturity with the Fund with a US$1 billion loan from the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF, its Spanish acronym) and with yuan, via a currency swap the administration signed with China.

The country is going through an international reserve scarcity crisis, as its net reserves are calculated at negative US$10 billion.

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—with information from Reuters