In the Palacio de Hacienda they anticipate that a “Active January”, according to the words that Sergio Massa passed on to his collaborators. In the face of a summer in which there will be less currency revenue, measures and legislative projects promise.
After the end of soybean dollar 2, in official offices they know that it will be more difficult to add foreign currency in the coming days. For this reason, one of the lights that starts flashing on the official keyboard is the a new nod to soy, no date yet.
“The producer who sold now in the December window will not sell in January, he will cash in, we will have to open a new window”, assesses an Economy source. In the projections of the FyMA consultancy, by Fernando Marull, agricultural supply will drop to $1,000 million on average between January and March.
However, drought up to USD 16,000 million could be subtracted from the agricultural currency liquidation in 2023 compared to the estimated USD 46,000 million for 2022, according to the Rosario Stock Exchange.
“A dollar of wheat is impossible, it would raise the price of bread a lot because the bakers would say they have a more expensive bag (although that’s not true), also the wheat burnt due to the drought, so we will export very little, not even the corn, because the shipments we were supposed to make between February and April were wiped out by the drought, It will be a very tough year. In cereals and oilseeds, there are no more grains to sell,” said one exporter.
Massa still has other tools to expand the supply of foreign currency. One of them is the acceleration of the official exchange rate. After approving a $6 billion disbursement, the IMF persisted maintain the daily rate of devaluation above the rise in prices, but close to Massa believe that “if you raise the creeping peg, you go against inflation”.
The official dollar closed Friday at 177 dollars, an average rate of 5.9% per month, above the previous weeks and inflation that the Economy estimates at around 5% in December. During the year, however, it appreciated by 10% in real terms, according to Ecolatina. At the Treasury they say it They have no plans to peg the exchange rate, a temptation in election years.
The other button that appears on the official bulletin board is import controls, something the minister has already resorted to and which also has side effects. “If you restrict imports even more, you will have less activity and a little more inflation. If you devalue you will have much more inflation, but it will definitely not be necessary to deal with imports,” warned Andrés Borenstein, chief economist at Econviews.
Access to official dollars is key to maintaining the agreed price limit of 4% per month through March. Massa promised them to large-scale producers for the supply of gondolas. Meanwhile, he is exploring other sources of foreign currency, such as money laundering, a possible exchange with Brazil and multilateral funds. The question is whether it will be enough to meet payments to the IMF and bondholders, which total more than US $4,000 million before Marchaccording to EcoGo.
AQ
Source: Clarin
