(Reuters) -The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reached out to the camps of Argentina presidential candidates Javier Milei and Patricia Bullrich to coordinate meetings, a source close to the fund said on Tuesday.
Milei, a far-right libertarian who earlier told local radio about the approach, took the most votes in the primary election over the weekend, while Bullrich, a hard-line conservative, won the internal contest of the main opposition party, which received the second-largest amount votes.
Current Economy Minister Sergio Massa, who has met with fund staff and officials in the past, rounds up the top three contenders in the October election.
The IMF said through an official, without naming Milei or Bullrich, that it regularly engages with a range of stakeholders, and “in the case of presidential candidates, these engagements also allow staff to better understand key aspects of future potential economic policies.”
Argentina, the largest debtor with the IMF after years of economic crisis, has seen inflation hit triple-digits as savers have lost faith in the currency, pushing almost four-in-ten people below the poverty line.
The Argentine peso on Tuesday hit a record low of 720 per dollar in parallel exchanges, more than double the official rate of 350.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Gabriella Borter; Editing by Barbara Lewis and Sandra Maler)
