In a press conference, Economy Minister Amado Boudou announced the debt-swap acceptance rate has reached 66 percent. Investors have entered 12.067 billion dollars in defaulted Argentine bonds, representing an overall participation rate of 92.4 percent, including the participation rate achieved in the 2005 restructuring deal, during Néstor Kirchner's administration.In the 2010 stage of the debt-swap process, 20 billion dollars were included in the financial operation; however, the process amounts to at least 30 million dollars if the 9 billion dollars collected in 2005 are also taken into account.
After having announced that he was to "publicly analyze" the debt-swap outcome data, Boudou gave a press conference escorted by Finance Secretary Hernán Lorenzino and officially release the statistics several media had been speculating about for the past days. "Almost 12.700 billion dollars have entered in this stage of the process," he ratified. "Expectations have been loosely exceeded," he celebrated, and specified that the final percentage goes "10 percent beyond" of what the government had imagined it would account for.
"Thanks to this account, the government is putting an end to the default issue, which has been around since 2001," Boudou continued to praise the outcome. "It's very important to highlight that the overall participation amounts to 92,4 percent," he assured. "This leads to an optimistic view of the problem, and allows us to close this chapter in the Argentine history," he said.
On the Paris Club, Boudou assured "the debt-swap process is not an isolated operation and new things are to be solved promptly." He concluded: "We have to continue working to find the right path for new negotiations in Argentina."
Source: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/BreakingNews/View/37166
