The currency front continues with mixed signals: despite the gap putting pressure, the Central Bank has closed a series of thirty consecutive rounds of purchases in the MULC and has accumulated 5,500 USD in the last month. In the parallel market, the financial dollar finally gave way this Tuesday and closed below $1,300 $1,285, while, on the other hand, the blue made another leap to reach 1,255 dollars.
While this week two key fronts are being defined for the first part of Javier Milei’s government: the political one in Congress, with the discussion of the Omnibus Law, and the social one this Thursday with the general strike called by the CGT, the Central Bank managed to accumulate more net reserves and convince investors that the race for the Bopreal this week will be successful.
After four wheels with little flight, in which the organization managed to place only 1,644 million dollars, several operators in the City have declared that if they join the tender this week several multinationals that the Government would have approved, the result could rebound. This, they argue, would be the important factor that led to cash payments taking a breather after two weeks of sharp increases.
The exchange rate used by companies to materialize fell by 2% and closed at 1,281 dollars, restoring the exchange rate gap, which had reached 60% on Friday, fell to 55.8%. The fifth tender will be held on Wednesday and Thursday through which the government intends to settle the debt acquired during the last administration with the importing sector and a better performance is expected.
“Today there was increased trading of Bopreales on the secondary market, according to market rumors the movements came almost exclusively from local traders,” noted fund manager MegaQM. These movements served to modify the upward trend that the CCL had shown in the last two weeks of January.
The MEP dollar also weakened marginally: it fell 0.7% and closed at $1,233.22, making it the cheapest free exchange rate on the market. On the street, however, the blue dollar started to rise again: in the last two laps it rose by 35 dollars and closed at 1,255 dollars.
For economist Gustavo Ber, it is the advancement of the Foundations Act in Congress that explains the fall of the financial dollar. “The improved parliamentary expectations continue to contribute to a climate of greater calm among financial dollars, which comes after an accelerated jump in the “gap” to ~60%, a level already close to the dollar paper and which could trigger a short-term pause, and even deflate if the Omnibus Law is finally passed, thus postponing the acceleration of the “crawling-peg” that could be the next strategy to try to control exchange rate dynamics,” he said.
These fluctuations in the parallel market did not prevent the Central Bank from purchasing dollars for its reserves again. The organization chaired by Santiago Baulisi obtained 188 million dollars for its interventions in the MULC. Thus, according to preliminary calculations, their coffers amounted to almost 24,669 million dollars.
“We find it surprising that the monetary authority continues to maintain an acceptable pace of purchases with the gap skyrocketing to record levels for this government,” they noted in the PPI. “We underline that an upward gap disincentivizes exporters to liquidate in the face of the growing expectation of a new devaluation, which causes the rate differential between the 2% crawling peg and the 8/9% monthly leverage to lose power
Source: Clarin
