After the soybean dollar blockbuster, in which the government managed to persuade the Central Bank to buy nearly 50% more dollars than it had budgeted, time to do some math. The Central Bank it bought 7,669 million dollars at 200 pesos and sold 2,697 million on the official market the price of which varied from 140.58 on 6 September to 147.31 on 30 September. We estimate that the Central Bank paid an additional 55.83 pesos to soybean producers for every dollar sold.
This cost must be borne by the treasury. The Central Bank funded that account for the Central Bank and for this the national government issued a bond loan in favor of the monetary entity, so that in the first instance the Central Bank does not change its balance, but the treasury. owes more money thanks to this policy. It is as if he had obtained a transitional advance.
The additional monetary issue to meet the 200 pesos per dollar price was 428.180 million. The Central Bank actually issued 1.53 trillion pesos (7.669 million multiplied by 200). But if I had bought those dollars at the market it should have issued 1.1 trillion. The number of 428.18 billion actually overestimates the cost to the government because soybean sellers they paid withholdings on a 200 dollar, therefore, if we take into account the additional retention collected in September of 141,300 million, we come to the conclusion that the government spent 286.881 million to be able to increase reserves, exit the zone of direct descent and be able to reach the goal of the Monetary Fund.
There are many other edges. The fiscal data for September will be good because the withholdings collected for soy have exceeded 500,000 million pesos. About 100,000 million are harvested in a normal month and this includes other products besides soy, although soybeans are by far the one that increases the most. Now, 360,000 million of those 500,000 they are advances of withholding taxes, not actual collections. It is money that sooner or later would have been collected and that we will not see in the coming months.
Another relevant topic is where 428,180 million will appear in the deficit accounts. If we’re counting withholding tax, we should count that too. If this were not spent, there would be no bonuses for the Central Bank. Apparently the Financial Administration Act would allow this creativity in the accounts and the Monetary Fund would not object. It’s a gray area of tax accounting that would make public accounts look better than they actually are.
Finally, there is the monetary issue. The gross issue that the Central Bank had to make to buy all these dollars had to be sterilized with Leliqs and pass, which, as is well known, pay interest rates, so much so that today the Central Bank is more comfortable on the dollar side, but they have more debt which will need to be serviced at a nominal rate of 75% for Leliq and 70% for repo which are effective rates of 107 and 101%. Given that there will be fewer dollar flows in the coming months as a large part of the soybean stock has already started, it will be necessary to see how many of these dollars the Central Bank will be able to hold in the coming months.
Source: Clarin
