Luis Caputo tries to clarify the horizon of peso debt maturities for this year and negotiates with banks to new debt exchange in pesos that would reach 70,000 million dollars, the equivalent of the deadlines expected for the local market during 2024. Meetings between the economic team and financial institutions began last week and These days will continue in absolute secrecy.
After the version of a new debt swap into pesos became current last Friday, the first of the Milei era, the Economy opted for secrecy. There were calls from official offices to banks, to prevent the terms and conditions of this new negotiation from spreading to the market.
Sources at the Treasury Palace limited themselves to reporting to this newspaper: “At that meeting the economic program was presented and ideas on the management of liabilities were exchanged.”
The negotiations are led by the Minister of Finance, Pablo Quirno, and by Caputo himself. The Government’s intention is to issue new ones peso bonds that would be traded for all maturities scheduled for this year on the debt market. Total maturities exceed $57 billion, of which almost 30% would be in the hands of financial institutions.
In the first instance, the proposal of the Caputo – Quirno tandem would be that this exchange takes place at market prices and that it is voluntarysomething similar to what Sergio Massa had offered to financial institutions on two occasions during 2023. The difference this time is the amount at stake: if materialized It would be the largest public debt swap in history.
The proposal on the table is to change the debt maturities that the Treasury will face this year with new bonds with durations from 2025 to 2027, which are linked to inflation. For economist Miguel Kiguel, of Econviews, the offer could be of interest to banks and help Caputo to clarify uncertainty and limit peso issuance at a key time.
“The banks have a small part of that debt, the majority of the debt, about 70% is from the public sector, so I don’t think it is a problem for the renewal since the public sector always accompanies. The remaining part in the hands of the private sector, I think the banks have half of it and I think the banks will expand because they have a small portion of their liquidity in these bonds. the placement takes place at market rates” Kiguel said.
For his part, Fernando Marull, of FM y Asociados, underlined: “All debt maturities are inflation-indexed bonds and dollar-linked bonds. We need to see if holders of inflation-indexed bonds are willing to redeem the inflation from now, from December, January and February, with a one-year bond. If they do it at the market price, they are already paying for these months’ inflation, so I don’t see any problem for them to enter into this exchange.”
As for the signal for the market, Kiguel said: “I think the market She will accompany him and take it well. This is positive, it poses a problem, but it is not the most complex thing to do at the moment” and referred to the political front of Congress for the approval of the Omnibus Law and the presidential DNU, the recovery of reserves and the exchange front .
Source: Clarin
