From the beginning of the year, the foreign exchange settlement took place in May broke another record and this time consider the the best in history since the measurement was taken.

Yesterday the companies in the sector grouped in Ciara, the Chamber of Petroleum Industry, announced that they had liquidated 4,231 million dollars, 33% more than in April.

Between January and May, the exchange regulation amounts to $ 15,329 million, 15% more than in the same period of 2021.

Such a dollar injection avoided the stress of the exchange rate. It is not cheap. A data: the blue dollar is traded in May like last January. Of course, the Central Bank was unable to take advantage of strengthening its reserves. In these five months the net purchases of the plant reached 900 million dollars, a small one compared to the dollars the field has brought.

These dollars are brought in through the Central Bank, which gives exporters pesos at the official exchange rate so that they can buy the goods.

And comes another problem. Due to the drought, the harvest has decreased and producers are more reluctant to sell the wheat. Currently the idle capacity of the oil industry reaches a high 50%.

That volume of foreign exchange reflects not only the robust international prices which grew at the pace of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Furthermore, that numerous exporters have anticipated operations out of fear obstacles to shipments or an adjustment of withholdings as they have insinuated from the Kirchnerist sector of the government.

“The liquidation of foreign currency is fundamentally linked to the purchase of cereals which will then be exported, in the same state or as processed products, after an industrial transformation”, they explained to Ciara.

Most of the foreign exchange earnings in this sector are produced before exports.

It is around 30 days in the case of grain shipments and up to 90 days in the export of protein oils and flours.

Gustavo Idigoras, head of Ciara, attributes this currency boom to high international prices, especially for wheat and soybean oil.

warn in dialogue with Clarino: “We have huge Difficulty in finding goods to be processed, the sales rate is limited. To which must be added the drought that has also hit Paraguay ”.

Therefore, Idigoras points out that the industry that just injected the largest volume of foreign exchange ever recorded for May, it works with negative margins due to its “large idle capacity. we lose money“.

In the coming months this wave of dollars hardly repeat. Simply because a large part of the harvest has already been “liquidated”.

This means that the Central, which has not been able to buy to accumulate reserves, will have more difficulties in the second half of the year e it may not meet the target of reserves committed to the IMF.

According to INDEC, the oilseed-grain complex, including biodiesel and its derivatives, contributed 48% of Argentina’s total exports last year.

The country’s main export product is soybean meal (14.2% of the total). The second most exported product last year, according to INDEC, was corn (11%) and the third was soybean oil (6.9%) “, they specified.

surplus sector

• The volume of foreign currency that the field contributes makes it the most surplus item in the economy.
• For the first time, agro-exporters’ daily payments exceeded the average of $ 200 million, approximately $ 201.5 million up from $ 191.7 million in June 2018 and $ 186.6 million. dollars in May 2021.
• The oil-grain complex, including biodiesel and its derivatives, contributed 48% of Argentina’s total exports last year.
• The country’s main export product is soybean meal (14.2% of the total), which is an industrialized by-product.
• The second most exported product last year, according to official data, was corn (11%) and the third was soybean oil (6.9%).

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