Questions: if it is true that with a good harvest we savedit is also true that with a villain we sink? Or do we really need a lot of good or very good ones to dribble the call external constrainti.e. the recurring, same foreign currency shortage that here hinders economic growth and generates trap upon trap?
Something of this fluctuation, its contradictions and its consequences appears in the intersecting and colliding numbers. Between exports and imports of 2022 and 2023 or, if you prefer, immediately.
register of recordscurrencies liquidated by the oilseeds and grains complex totaled a staggering amount 40,438 million dollars last year and surpassed 2021’s by $7.6 billion.
With such power, the phenomenon has catapulted another unprecedented green first: thes US$88,446 million in total overseas salesthat is, 10,000 million more than in 2021.
Arranged according to the relative weight of each activity, when we speak of the oil-cereal complex we say soybeans and above all soybean flour; also say corn, wheat and followed by 48% or nearly half of Argentina’s exports. It is what is called closed dependence on only three productive sectors, certainly strong, but basically only three.
And what is happening in this 2023? In principle, there is a brutal drought shaking the column that actually supports a large part of the economy, including inputs and parts for the most diverse industrial activities, the payment of foreign debt and the electricity that normally we miss.
According to data from specialists, compared to the main agricultural exports of 2022 would face declines of between $13.9 billion, $15,000 and as much as $20,000 million.
If the decline were nailed to 15,000 million dollars, we would be facing a new record, only it would be a record against. It would mean a historic decline, the largest in the last 30 years according to data from analyst Marcelo Elizondo.
Part of this table shows the currency settlement of the soybean-corn-wheat conglomerate reported by industry entities for the first quarter.
They estimate revenue of $2.984 million, less than half the $7.900 million in January-March last year.
And if the operations carried out in 2022 weigh on this result, it is true that the blows of external restrictions have already begun to be felt on an economy exposed, moreover, to unrest and uncertainty, to power struggles and to the rule of bad governance.
Always willing to put their problems in a place that is not theirs, Alberto Fernández and company load the bill into the drought account, as they did in other cases with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the pandemic and, always, with the legacy of Macrismo and whatnot neoliberalism.
It is clear that the drought is not the fault of Kirchnerism, even if it is also true that certain precautions such as saving and don’t waste fat cow time such as other countries are possible. Especially in economies heavily dependent on factors that officials cannot and do not know how to control.
In the midst of a 2022 that smelled of abundant dollars, the government put a stranger in the bank, suspicious import festival this in no way corresponded to an economy which, while rebounding, did not give much.
There have been months, a few, in which purchases abroad have grown by 40, 45, up to 53% against exports which have sailed at 15, 7%, even against the tide. The Deputy Minister of Economy, Gabriel Rubinstein himself went so far as to admit as a spectator: “Companies are storing imports as a way to buy dollars at the official price.”
It is understood that cheap Central Bank dollars traded at the current price in some of the parallel markets produce profits close to 90%. Dollars usually handled by hand, according to convenience, sometimes inconvenience and absent dollars where they are essential to keep companies alive.
Pressed by a trend advancing towards the red, Sergio Massa began to improvise with soy dollars and swaps and bond weighting, to spend on behalf of 2023 exports and, finally, to get his hands on the BCRA box to meet commitments that it deemed appropriate not to postpone.
Thus, in fits and starts, with more less than more, 2022 full of records that were expected to be brilliant ended with a trade surplus equal to half that recorded in normal 2021: 6.923 million dollars against 14.750 million dollars.
At the end of that same 2022, the net reserves, let’s say available, of the Central were around 7.3 billion dollars. Another stark contrast similar to another proof that the big money kept slipping away.
A classic in similar processes, pressure against increasingly scarce assets soon reduced BCRA stock to about $1.7 billion or less than zero, if you discount gold reserves. That’s how we are now, according to data from consulting firm LCG.
Rather, We are similar to 2015 with Cristina Kirchner President and Axel Kicillof Minister of Economy. Times of super soy at 650 dollars a ton (100 more than now) and simultaneously of riveted inventories and discretionary imports, of an unstoppable flight of foreign exchange and, of course, of incandescent reserves.
Nothing very different from the mess we have today or what is coming.
Enough said of what we have. And what’s coming is a decline in economic activity that some consultants estimated 2 to 3% and now put 4 to 5%; plus a price index pointing to 120% a year and of course another hit to real wages, even though it’s already losing 10 percentage points against inflation.
The list goes on, but the bell these days has been there 45% which marked poverty in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. That is 5.7 million people and almost 6 percentage points more than the national average, right there where Cristina Kirchner concentrates her electoral power and a large part of her political future is at stake. And despite the mountain of resources that the Casa Rosada relentlessly directs to the Province, outside the National Budget and according to its interests.
A good part, if you will, is contradictory, seen through the money that the government pours into social programs. In Assignment for Child, Advancement and Feeding; in Potenciar Trabajo and in each of those leading to PAMI and ANSeS.
In any case, it seems clear that we are dealing with a model of care that is deficient and, once again, public resources that run out of control or are wasted.
Pure mathematics, says one analyst. Nothing that exists seems conducive to the aspirations of Kirchnerism: economy and wages falling, inflation skyrocketing, more and more poverty and increasing destitution, with dollars always making noise and all together and at the same time on the way to PASO and the elections of 22 October.
Without a plan and a clean patch, even this hammering is not what was expected from Sergio Massa’s management, even if, it should be added, two central protagonists of this work should be brought on stage: the President and the Vice-President.
Source: Clarin
