Currency tensions eased at the end of the week. The blue dollar is finished with $1,220, 35 pesos below the price shown last Monday.
As for financial dollars, the decline has been more drastic: Gone is liquidity, the way companies aredollarized 81 pesos less compared to the price shown at the beginning of the week. In the case of the MEP dollar, listed on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange, the decrease was 53 pesos.
In this way, financial dollars put on hold the rally they had experienced since the beginning of the year, and so on This led to liquidity rising by 26.5% and MP’s rising by 19.5%, the same as the blue dollar.
What stopped this rally was the good performance of BOPREAL, the bond with which the Government tries to pay off the debt with importers, which amounts to 42.6 billion dollars.
After a stormy start, in which importers turned their backs on the title because they considered it uninteresting, in the fifth race the government managed to announce 2,454 million dollars and so he added 4,096 million dollars for the whole month.
This was possible because the bureaucratic procedures were unblocked so that importers could opt for the bond and because the secondary market for the bond began to function, which can be used to pay tax debts.
This caused demand from importers, intended for financial dollars, to begin to decline and shift towards BOPREAL. With fewer buyers, the price fell, especially that of liquid cash, and this in turn narrowed the exchange rate gap, which added more attractions to the bonus.
Today the gap is 49%, after exceeding 60% days ago.
This Friday the Central acquired 117 million dollars and already the numbers add up 3,032 million dollars in the month e 5,894 million dollars from the devaluation of last December 13th. This allowed the gross reserves to be reached 25,004 million dollarsa ceiling that had not been exceeded since before the presidential elections in October.
He takes the Central 31 consecutive shopping trips, the longest record in 21 years. But a good part of these acquisitions were possible thanks to the fact that until a few days ago Centrale was practically the only player, due to the restrictions that the government continued to apply to importers.
But the Central Bank announced it on Thursday From February almost 10,000 SMEs will be able to access the official dollar cancel debts with your suppliers.
While the weight of SMEs is low within importers’ debt, this should fuel demand, along with importers’ access to foreign currency for ongoing operations. Therefore, the Central Bank’s chances of maintaining the purchasing streak will be limited.
Source: Clarin
