As the PASO election approaches, government needs keep the flame of consumption alivealthough it contradicts the alleged fight against inflation what it says to deal with.
The problem is that unlike the 2021 election, this time there is not much rest in the Treasury box to put pesos in people’s pockets. There is no room for another “silver plan” financed by Casa Rosada -the copyright belongs to the former minister of health of Buenos Aires, now national deputy Daniel Gollan- Today people have to put the money in, or at the very least they ask for help from the banks so that they are a little more flexible when it comes to financing their customers. And the pockets of the employees are not overflowing. Beyond the fact that Kirchnerism clings to a new line of self-help: “There’s more money on the street than you think.”
It is not surprising that this invitation to consume and get into more debt by “unpacking the card”, addressed by the Government to a population which, for the most part, is losing against inflation, coincides over time with another official move, but in the direction opposite. : increase the monetary policy of the interest rate so that people who have pesos and have advanced, I have left them deposited for a fixed time, so as not to go to the dollar. That is, it suggests to the saver that postpone consumption. The opposite of what Minister Sergio Massa proposed on Monday.
In yet another sign that the banks already appear a government appendage, The economy wants to force them to raise spending and funding limits, even at slightly lower rates. The government’s appendix is due to the growing amount of pesos (from its customers) that banks are lending to the Treasury and the Central Bank. To the Treasury to finance its deficit, and to the Central in exchange for Leliq.
Massa focused on spending limits on cards and fares that banks charge to finance installment purchases or the portion of your statement that hasn’t been paid on the day your card expires.
The card is withdrawn
The credit card par excellence, the fastest and most agile is the credit card. But plastic money began to lose ground for various reasons. One of them is that banks no longer see the card as a vehicle for making money. Today it is a low-profit service. That’s why many of them have started to slow down updating their customers’ purchase limits. Nothing less than in a context of inflation of 7 or 8% per month in the months since 2023. And despite the fact that many of its customers are attached to salary plans and therefore the bank knows perfectly well how many pesos go into that account on a regular basis.
From the point of view of the bank, the credit card it ceases to be a business if the customer does not finance a part of its synthesis. Why, in fact, One month’s consumption is financed at zero interest, if the customer pays the entire statement on the due date. This is easy to understand. A consumption of, for example, $30,000 made the day after the monthly summary closes will only be paid after 30 days at 0% interest rate. It is convenient for the customer to consume quickly in the first few days by making a small rate by placing their liquidity at a fixed term (8% yield per month) or in a money market (6% yield).
Due to the limits on fees, commissions and tightened caps on interest rates, banks are not interested in encouraging credit card consumption.
The latest statistics from the Central Bank, included in the retail payments report, confirm this. The work, with data as of March of this year, states that “interannual variations of 11.6% are observed in the amounts of the operations but falls in real terms – discounting inflation by -1.5% in quantity, making 103.4 million payments worth $877.6 billion.”
For the month of April, the real change in the amounts transacted was -7.2% and in the number of transactions -1%.
The data is eloquent: there is a setback in the use of credit cards, just when their use would be more convenient, given the galloping inflation.
It is true that users they respect the charter. And those who have less financial capabilities they prefer to use it right and necessary, so you don’t lose control of your weights. In other words, do not be tempted by consumption and quotas which then become difficult to deal with.
That’s why virtual wallets and other means of payment where you can instantly see how much money is left in the account also emerge as big winners in the world of payment means.
Source: Clarin
