In the government they underline that in the last 100 days, since Sergio Massa took over the ministry of the Economy, the foreign exchange market has recovered a certain stability, especially in the parallel segment. However, skyrocketing prices and persistent and accelerated bleeding from central bank reserves could put a brake on this tense calm.
Central had to do it on Friday sell US$50 million in the formal market, which totals US$763 million sold in the first two weeks of November. Exactly twelve months ago, the agency parted ways with $900 million, in a month that is seasonally in deficit for the agency.
This year two factors combine to exacerbate this red: on the one hand, the secondary effect of the “soybean dollar”, which has led field farmers to anticipated exports in September, for which the inflow of foreign currency on the market in the last two months of the year is estimated to be high less than in the last two months of 2021.
At the same time, imports authorized under the previous regime, SIMIS, continue to put pressure on the agency, which has already raised the daily rate of devaluation to 6.5% to keep the price of the official dollar at bay and avoid it means a jump in the exchange rate.
Economist Fernando Marull warned: “With real activity affected, nerves are growing financially”, and underlined that there are two risk fronts for the stability of the exchange rate. On the one hand, the reservations: “It is theIt is unsustainable for BCRA to sell $100 million a day, when there are only US$5.2 billion of net reserves. With the official dollar at 6.5% per month, the alternative is to tighten equities more, affecting activity and accelerating inflation,” he has declared.
Marull stressed the weakness of the peso debt market after an exchange in which the government it has failed to attract private investors. “Although we hope that the next tenders will improve, if in the end there is a situation of greater debt stress in pesos. We assume that the BCRA will issue what it has to issue to avoid a reprofiling. As it did, and as it did in June. Those pesos will put pressure on the parallel dollar,” he said.
On the stock exchange, prices have already started to show tension. “Financial dollars have shown a bullish reaction over the past few days, with the MEP dollar once again hovering around $300 and the CCL at $310 reflecting a local financial environment less benevolent and some exhaustion in carry trade bets after two months of high hard currency yields,” Delphos analysts said.
In an increasingly complex context, the market does not exclude Massa from calling on a major tightening of inventories, or to new dollars “likePablo Repetto, of Aurum Valores, said that “unless there is a discrete leap in the exchange rate, the pre-election path will be accompanied by increasing restrictions or ad hoc soy dollar-style solutions”.
Source: Clarin
