The foreign exchange market will also work this Monday with attention to the performance that agriculture can achieve in the second week of “soy dollar 3“and before a parallel segment in which the dollar appears more in demand and which translated into prices. On Friday the blue closed at $400, his highest nominal mark in history, while MEP and cash-with-settlement ended up at $398 and $404, respectively.
The expectation of the Municipality is that with the turning of the wheels, the liquidation mechanism of agricultural oils and the Central Bank can partially recover its purchasing position, at least for these 45 days of maximum offer on the market. Last week, Central managed to buy about 300 million US dollars on the market, thus reducing this month’s negative balance.
Since the price fix for the dollar of soybeans will not change until the completion of this third phase of the program, the inflationary acceleration could work in favor of producers who accelerate their liquidation rate. “The more successful the program will be in terms of liquidation, while it will bring more calm on the external front, will bring with it a greater injection of pesosas happened in previous editions”, warned the economist of GMA Capital, Nery Persichini.
At the same time, the 7.7% reported by INDEC on the rise in prices in March only complicates the exchange rate scenario, since although the Central Bank raised the daily rate of devaluationthe discrepancy with the rest of the prices in the economy makes the price of the US currency appear “cheap” in its various quotations.
With last week’s jump, the blue dollar piles into the street at just over 12% increase since the beginning of the year, well below the inflation that has accumulated since the end of 2022, which reached 21.7% in the first quarter.
Something similar happens with financial prices: after the latest changes to the purchase of securities linked to the cash transaction with settlement, the so-called cable dollar, the rise in this price, the one used by companies to become dollarized, is slightly higher than Prices up 17% since January, lower than the rest of the economy.
“In the nominal race, prices have once again dominated, leaving behind interest rates, the official exchange rate and wages,” warned the consultancy Delphos Investment in its latest weekly report. While unions already negotiate parity adjustments every three months, the central bank decided last Thursday take no action on the official rate.
The expectation is that the body chaired by Miguel Pesce must validate a new increase in the reference rate starting this week, to keep the financial variables within an axis and try to get closer to the objective of positive real rates which was raised with the Fund.
The rate could increase by at least 200 basis points, from 78% of the current TNA to 80% of the Nominal Annual Rate. However, on the market they warn that to overcome the inflationary peak of 7.7% per month, the body would have to make a greater adjustment, of 500 points.
“The overheating of prices leaves the Central Bank with the need to accelerate the devaluation of the official exchange rate and probably also raise interest rates if we take into account that April inflation would be close to 7% per month“, they added in Delphos and warned that both strategies also contain an inflationary component.
Source: Clarin
