Argentina is on track to meet its 2018 year-end spending targets, the country's treasury minister said on Monday, after it posted a deficit that was 31 percent narrower compared to this time last year. Argentina posted a fiscal deficit of 22.9 billion pesos ($622 million) in September, bringing the deficit to 153 billion pesos ($28 billion) in the first nine months of 2018.
That was equivalent to 1.1 percent of Argentina's gross domestic product, putting it on track to beat the 2.6 percent year-end deficit target the government set earlier in the year, Treasury Minister Nicolas Dujovne said.
"In the first nine months of the year, spending has contracted 7 percent when compared to the same period last year. We are at the lowest level of government spending since 2012," Dujovne told reporters at a conference in Buenos Aires.
Argentina revised its deficit targets in September after a sharp devaluation in the peso led the country to secure a $57 billion stand-by financing agreement with the International Monetary Fund, the largest in the Fund's history.
President Mauricio Macri's government has introduced fiscal belt-tightening by increasing taxes and rolling back subsidies on public utilities, moves that have faced push back from unions and political opposition groups.
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