WASHINGTON (AFP) - The International Monetary Fundy gave Argentina a one-year extension on repaying 1.1 billion dollars in debt.
"The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund today approved a one year extension of Argentina's repayment expectations to the IMF in the total amount equivalent to" about 1.1 billion dollars in debt, the financial body said in a statement.
"IMF policy on repayment expectations allows for such extension where the member's external position is not sufficiently strong for it to repay early without undue hardship or risk."
Argentine President Nestor Kirchner's government had requested the extension.
But the IMF said Argentina must pay back 1.46 billion dollars over the next four months, and Argentine authorities "are committed" to making the payments.
The payments on the 1.1-billion-dollar debt were also due between September and December.
During the executive board's meeting, "Argentina was urged to decisively address all the outstanding structural issues in their program, and to complete a comprehensive and sustainable debt restructuring."
The international financial institution is pressing Argentina to show progress in discussions to repay bondholders after a massive default in December 2001, now covering some 104 billion dollars including interest.
Bondholders have rejected Argentina's offer to pay just one-quarter of the bonds' face value.
Last month, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner said that IMF mistakes, highlighted in an audit by an IMF watchdog, had pushed about 15 million people into poverty in Argentina.
But the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office blamed Argentina for failing to avert the crisis. It also criticized the IMF for backing wayward policies right up to the December 2001 economic collapse.
The IMF has yet to clear a third payment to Argentina from a deal signed a year ago restructuring 21 billion dollars in debt to multilateral lenders.