The first week of May closed with the parallel dollar practically stable, but also with negative signals in the exchange balance. With the difficulties that the Central Bank has in acquiring foreign currency, net reserves are already negative by $1 billion.
Net reserves determine what is the ability of the Central Bank to intervene in the foreign exchange market. To estimate them, it is necessary to discount the required reserves of savers’ dollar deposits, the currency swap with China, loans from international banks and other short-term obligations.
An 1816 consulting firm report specifies that after payments of 750 million dollars to the Monetary Fund that were made this week, net reserves are already negative by $1,000 million, the worst result since the release of Convertibilityexcept for a few days during the change of government in 2015.
At the same time, gross reserves remained at 34 billion dollarsa decline of $10 billion so far in 2023.
The shortage of foreign currency and the blow of the drought are already making themselves felt strongly in the coffers of the Centrale, which continues to increase the debt with importers which today tends to 14 billion dollars.
The decline in net reserves is a red light for the market and encourages defensive behavior. For this reason, one of the sources of concern is the decline in the stock of dollar deposits, which was reduced by US$ 1081 million in the last 27 rounds, according to the detail of the consultant 1816.
“The value of the Central Bank’s high-quality asset, the fundamental one to ensure calm on the exchange rate front, sailing below zero“, argues GMA Capital and estimates negative net reserves at $1.2 billion
“Although they had already shown red numbers in early 2022, they had never been below $1,000 million. Looking even more sour, if we take gold and IMF SDRs off the net stock, liquid reserves are negative by US$ 7,000 million”, GMA points.
To get out of this quagmire, the Government aims to bring forward the expected disbursements to the IMF and at the same time to free it from complying with payments. But despite the official optimism, this negotiation is far from over.
In this short week, relief for the government has come from alternative dollars. Last Tuesday, new restrictions were established on cash operations with liqui and deputy, which limited the number of transactions and controlled prices.
The blue dollar closed at $469, one weight gain per day, having touched $474 on Wednesday. The MEP dollar remained practically stable, with a slight rise of 0.5% which brought it to $432.3, while cash with cash increased 1.7%, to $456.
Added to this is that over the last two rolls the soy dollar has bounced by 3. This Friday has contributed US$113 million and accumulates US$2,031 million since it started four weeks ago. 20% of that total has entered so far in May.
Despite the improvement in recent soybean 3 dollar deals, analysts are predicting it the US$5,000 million target will not be met planned and that in the best case the program will close the month of May with revenues of approx 4 billion dollars.
On this Friday, the Central Bank managed to reverse the selling trend of the last six rounds and bought 2 million dollars. Yet, so far this month, sales reached $274 million.
Economist Salvador Vitelli noted that the central bank “purchased $111 million at $300 and sold $109 million in the Single Free Foreign Exchange Market (MULC). This translates into a net purchase of $2 million dollars, at 4,331.96 dollars to the dollar”.
«Beyond the better feeling that the acceleration of agricultural dollar settlements arouses among operators, concerns continue given that its dynamic was erratic, and it also fails to reverse the decline in net reserves which are already reaching critical levels,” said economist Gustavo Ber.
AQ
Source: Clarin
