This Friday the Central Bank completed what is the largest purchase of the month so far. taken 300 million dollars in the Single Free Trade Market (MULC), a level that had not been reached since last December 28th. With this operation, Santiago Bausili’s team is already in the pocket 1,436 million dollars since the start of the year.
These purchases allowed reserves to grow 905 million dollars so far this year, which allows the government to raise hopes of being able to achieve the objectives set in the agreement resumed with the Monetary Fund and to predict that by the end of the year reserves increased by 10,000 million dollars compared to the level they had at the beginning of Javier Milei’s management.
By December 10, the Central Bank’s gross reserves stood at 21,017 million dollars and today they reach 23,976 million dollars. But gross reserves remain negative: today they amount to around -8.5 billion dollars, after having exceeded the limit -10,000 million dollars just under a month ago.
Behind this tenuous recomposition lies the exporters’ liquidation program, which allows them to access a better exchange rate. Therefore, 80% of what they pay is taken at the wholesale dollar value, in effect today $816 and the remaining 20% in cash with liquid, which is in $1,136.
This incentive worked very well in December and helped to increase the exchange rate gap, which before Javier Milei took office was around 120%, reduced to 20%. So far in 2024, the volume of dollars contributed by exporters has decreased and liquid cash has increased by 17%, which brought the gap to around 40%.
On the other hand, until today the demand was limited because only energy importers could access the MULC, but From Friday the system is also enabled for importers of food and medicines. The rest of the imports will only be able to access 25% of the dollars they need in the MULC for now.
According to PPI estimates, this will add significant volume to demand 40% of total imports will be able to access the MULC. In this way, it is expected that starting next week it will be more difficult for the Central Bank to continue accumulating reserves.
“Although accumulation could be reduced with the authorization of the first installment of import payments (25%), if the high export levels estimated for cereals materialize, we are confident that foreign exchange absorption can continue to grow”, underline from Aurum Valores.
The gap is closing
The currency gap, which had reached 47% earlier in the week, closed at 39% on Friday. This is a consequence of the decline in liquidity, which in this round drops 1.1% and ends like this $1,136.
The MEP dollar also fell, with a drop of 25 bringing it to $1,096. The blue dollar, for its part, remained unchanged $1,120.
On the market they attribute the decline in liquidity to the fact that the bonus for importers, the BOPREAL, finally took off on Thursday. After two failed tenders, in the third the Government obtained support for 1,179 million dollars. This meant that the pesos that had been putting pressure on liquidity until the beginning of the week flowed into the bonds.
Source: Clarin
