So far in 2023, the blue dollar has won the race against inflation. the informal increased by 36% in the first four months of the year, while inflation for that period was 32%.
The official dollar and the financial one continue to be below the evolution of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the first quarter. MEP, which is traded on the Buenos Aires stock exchange and cash with liquidity or CCL, which allows foreign currency to be removed from the country, they were up 28% in that period.
The official exchange rate is another one they lost, with a wholesaler advance of 29.5% so far this year.
With this turnaround from last year, when inflation became comfortable at 94.8% and blue became 66% more expensive, even below the official one which increased by 71%. CCL also increased 71% in 2022, while MEP did 68%.
In the official dollar, today the Central Bank has validated a depreciation consistent with a rate of 6.6% per month and 117% per year, below the inflation forecast for the month and for the year. “So far in 2023 the average speed of the creeping peg continues to lag behind prices,” says consultancy firm LCG.
The advance of blue over the year reflects the weak exchange rate situation, with the Central Bank declining negative net reserves of approximately US$ 1,500 million and without the ability to rebuild reserves despite $3 soybeans contributing less than expected.
Miguel Pesce’s team managed to close this week with good news, with purchases of US$101 million, the highest amount for a wheel in three weeks. Even so, in the month it accumulates a red of 151 million dollars.
The lack of foreign currency leads the government to seek the dollars in other ways, with all pawns betting on the IMF agreeing to front disbursements and that the arrival of these currencies assuage market anxiety, heightened by the electoral uncertainty.
Despite the shortage, the government manages to intervene in the dollar financial market and contain the rise. At the end of April, the CCL came to touch the $480while blue has risen to $495. With the economic team selling bonds to drive down the price of financial dollars, today is the CCL $466.2 and the MEP of $434.8.
End of the pax cambiaria?
The blue dollar has barely moved this week and is trading at $474. But these three weeks of pax cambiaria are based on a growing fragility. For analysts, inflation data, with the 8.4% for April, the highest record for a month in 21 years could lead the Azzurri to move again.
In the first two weeks of May, the informal only collected five pesos, an amount equal to 0.9%, while in the same period the jump in prices already accumulates 4.8%, as measured by LCG consultancy. The leap into blue at the end of April partly explains the sharp rise shown by prices at the beginning of May.
For the economist Gustavo Ber, “although the creeping peg would show signs of a slowdown and that the central bank would keep rates for the time being, the reading that emerges from the inflation data could force us to reconsider these variables in order not to have to accentuate the interventions to contain tensions on exchange rates”.
«Meanwhile, the period of greater calm in regulated financial dollars is being extended – as are the freer implicit references – and for this they add wheels of slight oscillations Even if the dollarization process continues, and it could even intensify from the third quarter when we enter the final phase of the elections and, moreover, there is less seasonality in the supply of foreign exchange”, points out Ber.
AQ
Source: Clarin
