The BCRA has formalized the increase in fixed-term rates and reduced the cost of card financing

As announced this Sunday, Banco CentraThis Monday, he formalized the increase in the reference rates of the economy, in response to an inflationary escalation that seems difficult to stop. Agency list advanced by an increase of 600 basis points at the Leliq rate, which leads the yield on bank placements at 97% per annum, which implies an effective rate of 155%.

Try to keep savers in pesos and thus stop the fall in demand for money and even with every attempt to hedge the exchange rate, the agency raised the forward rate to the same level. For resellers, with placements up to $30 million, the rate will be 97% per year. “For the rest of the fixed-term deposits of the private sector, the minimum guaranteed rate is set at 90% (138% of TEA),” the agency said in a statement.

This rate hike implies a monthly return of around 8%, which still loses compared to past inflation and also with the estimates that most of the consultants of the Municipality made for the month of May. But in addition they have a very strong guarantee, which is the increase in the cost of credit.

To mitigate the impact on consumption, The agency ordered “the rate for financing credit card defaults to be reduced by two points for human persons and has dropped from 88% to 86% of the TNA since June.”

On Sunday Sergio Massa’s team anticipated that in order not to increase costs for families even further and not hit an already penalized level of consumption, Now 12 tax rates will be reduced by up to 9 percentage points. It is, as announced in Economy, “a concrete advantage for merchants and companies”. In addition, higher repayments will be expected for debit card consumption by vulnerable sectors.

To cushion the increase in credit to businesses, the Central established that “the tariffs of the MiPyme credit lines for productive investments maintain the condition of subsidized lines. For investment projects, the rate is 76% and for working capital 88% TNA.”

“The monetary authority’s decision is based on the objective of tending towards positive real returns on investments in local currency and acting immediately to prevent financial volatility from acting as a driver of inflation expectations,” the agency justified. Despite this hike, in the last three months those who made a fixed term have lost against the increase in prices in the economy.

The Center assures it “This decision is coordinated in the context of maintaining consistency with the level of short-term interest rates of State Treasury debt securities”

Finally, the agency announced that “it will continue to monitor the evolution of the general price level, the dynamics of the financial and exchange markets and monetary aggregates in order to calibrate its interest rate policy”.

NS