The administration of Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández is growing increasingly desperate to restart the burgeoning oil boom which was underway before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Argentina has been one of the worst affected countries in South America, despite moving early and decisively to curb the spread of the virus through a nationwide lockdown. This is because the Latin American country was already facing a major economic crisis, sky-high inflation, and fiscal weakness. Many of the pro-business reforms undertaken by Fernández’s predecessor Mauricio Macri, including unwinding complex subsidies, had little positive effect and were partly responsible for tipping the frail economy back into crisis. By 2018, Macri was forced to go to the IMF and ask for a bailout package , which at $57 billion was the largest loan ever given by the institution. Then in May 2020, Buenos Aires once again defaulted on its sovereign debt, the second time […]