In the first week after the soybean dollar, the central bank quickly abandoned its reserve buying position and reverted to its usual role. On Thursday, in view of an extra large weekend, the organization ended with a negative balance of US $ 92 million. After announcing further controls on imports, the government is finalizing the details of the measures to prevent the continuation of bleeding from the central coffers.
Despite the fact that the camp’s settlements fell precipitously without the one-dollar incentive improving to $ 200, going from $ 450 million on the last Friday in September to between $ 15 and $ 20 million last Thursday, in the government they hope that International Reserves will grow in the coming days, hand in hand with international disbursements.
Athe withdrawal of $ 3.8 billion from the IMF, after the approval of the second revision of the facility extension program agreement with the agency, loans of US $ 1,200 million pending from the Inter-American Development Bank would be added. However, even with this further reinforcement, both the Government and the Municipality share the concern about how to manage the cushion of dollars accumulated in September.
“Without new measures, the BCRA will sell reserves again and this can destabilize the Mass Plan“warned FMyA economist Fernando Marull.” The past week has passed relatively calmly on the foreign exchange market: the blue dollar has accumulated a decline of 7 dollars. like the financial ones that fall compared to the end of September: “That the BCRA sells dollars again will increase the dollars in parallel “, Marul warned.
Jorge Vasconcelos, of IERAL, warned that without new measures, the reserve scenario for the end of the year looks challenging. “Net reserves by mid-October could approach $ 5 billion, but the target committed with the IMF for the end of the year is 8.1 billion dollars. The size of this gap affects import authorizations for October-December, so the quota cannot exceed $ 6 billion per month, “he said.
After strengthen import controls, Massa’s economic team analyzes what other strategies are at hand to prevent the dollar outflow from continuing to rise. The Qatari dollar has all the credentials: the government had been expecting it for weeks announce a differential exchange rate for tourism.
Sources aware of the decisions explained that the requests from CAME, UIA, Adefa, Camarco and Cegera regarding the increase in the price of the tourist dollar have already been received by the Ministry of Economy and that there could be news in the coming days.
Beyond the “containment mechanisms” to stop the bleeding of reserves, concerns are growing in the Municipality about how The government will guarantee the entry of dollars into the economy, in a context in which agriculture has already anticipated its liquidations and drought marks the pulse of the next harvest.
“The severe drought affecting wheat will reduce the dollar supply in the summer, which will coincide with the seasonal increase in demand for tourism dollars,” they explained in the consultancy Delphos. “Therefore, a very limited supply of foreign currency is in sight in the summer, which adds to lower international prices than in early 2022. In this scenario, the challenges for the Central Bank appear to increase with the year’s end approaches.” they added.
So, while Sergio Massa will do everything to avoid a jump in the exchange rate, analysts are skeptical of the leeway he has to achieve this goal.
Juan Manuel Franco, economist at SBS Group, said: “Although our baseline scenario does not foresee an anticipated short-term devaluation, although we emphasize that in 2023 a real exchange rate that is more appreciated than the current one could imply lower agreements and pressures. on external accounts against payments for energy imports which we estimate will continue to weigh that year “
“We believe that sooner or later there will have to be a change in exchange rate policy, something also suggested by the IMF in its latest statement,” said Franco.
Source: Clarin
