Cristina Kirchner grabbed the pen and the dollar flew

Apparently, the vice president is willing to do that descend to the realm of managementday by day, abandoning the role of spectator without pen. Tired of nominal president Alberto Fernández delaying the measures she requested, in the last week she doubled the pressure to stop what he called an “import party”. It is said that in characterizing what happens in foreign trade, he allowed himself to be advised by the former minister and current governor of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof.

After officials responsible for fulfilling the vice president’s wishes were raided, a series of measures were announced on Monday pointing in the same direction: limit the sale of dollars to importers as much as possible, so that the really existing reserves go, as a priority, to energy imports. In the press releases it was included that SMEs were safe from this squeeze to take care of the forms, because this government is always in favor of SMEs, of course.

the vice president managerial, furious, irritated and now executivereached in 24 hours that the dollar in all its variants will increase by 5%. Also accepted by the vice president that we are in a bi-monetary economy, then it could well be said the population was 5% impoverished in dollars. Or that their income has contracted by that percentage in hard currency. The consequences of using the pen at will.

This Monday, the Minister of Economy, Martin Guzman, He pointed out that Argentina is a middle-income country, measured in dollars, and therefore the level of wages is excessively low if the parallel dollar is taken as a reference. You may be right, but since 99% of Argentines do not have access to the official dollar, there is no other choice but to refer to the parallel.

Really, everything is a consequence of the lack of dollars. Officials know this very well, they say that we will have to overwinter, that is to say that we need to import less energy. This occurs despite the fact that Argentina is currently experiencing the best terms of trade. In other words, the purchasing power of what the country exports is the highest in history compared to what it is importing. And there will also be a record year for exports, officials care to point out.

Finally, it will be necessary to see if the executive vice president will undertake to put pressure to increase the withholdings on agricultural products and by-products. In the government they accept, resigned, that a measure of this type has no possibility of passing through Congress. This, it seems, is not the point of the power of the pen.

The government has no dollars, that’s clear. But the ideas that the vice president has are not really aimed at reversing that deficit. There will be no magic.