A perfect cocktail to upset the dollar: 2 billion dollars for energy and criticism of Cristina Kirchner

The battle for dollars is playing one of the most tense scenarios of the year these days.

The payment of energy imports – which are strictly collected – has sued the Central Bank $ 2 billion in June with a jump of the order of 122% compared to the 900 million dollars of the previous months.

For Miguel Pesce this disbursement forms the basis of the new restrictions on obtaining dollars at the official price and paying for the imports that the plant has established.

Despite the meeting with the head of the Argentina Industrial Union that since the morning had highlighted the degree of uncertainty that the tourniquet to the trap of exchange entails for industrialists.

from the meeting with Daniel Funes from Rioja A period of waiting has emerged in the awareness that the “temporary” tightening of securities is the alternative to the ghost of the devaluation of the weight that both the government and the industrialists want to avoid.

In the government they distort the concept of vice president Cristina Kirchner on the existence of a “import party” with the numbers on the table: “if it weren’t for the $ 2,000 million of gas, imports would be $ 6,000 million, a level adequate to the level of activity shown by the economy,” according to a Treasury official.

The challenge now is to cross the narrow bridge of the shortage of foreign exchange until October, when, according to them, energy payments will drop to 800 million dollars.

First exchange wheel hardening of the clamp was blocked (traders had to analyze the scope of the Central Bank statement) and the Central Bank had a pause when it managed to buy $ 250 million, a positive result for reserves that it hadn’t reached in days.

Faced with the public acknowledgment that the Central Bank does not have sufficient dollars to provide import payments at the official dollar price, it was evident that the tensions would increase and the 3.3% rise in the dollar “counted in liquidation” that it went for $ 244 or blue goes up to $ 232 They put a new reality on the table.

The Minister of EconomyMartin Guzmanvery soon he tried to calm the minds of the workers by insisting at the wheel, as Miguel Pesce had done at the weekend, that the Central Bank would buy pesos bonds to avoid a collapse in prices.

Since the beginning of the trading session, the operators’ computers have kept in mind the Central Bank as a buyer in a purely selling market, pressured by the need of companies to get pesos to pay for profits, personal property and Christmas bonuses.

The production of pesos securities is strong and today Guzmán must obtain 243,000 million dollars, a figure that in another context should not worry him but which this time would translate in a new interest rate hike to compensate the holders of pesos.

Last week the Treasury raised the rate by four points, Will it increase another four points in this week’s offers?

The peso market has begun to act against Guzmán’s commitment to the International Monetary Fund, which sought to lower the Central Bank’s debt in liquidity securities (Leliqs) to favor the Treasury’s debt on the market and, therefore, reduce the need to issue to cover the fiscal budget deficit.

But the collapse of pesos bonds two weeks ago brings about a change of direction for money: the Central Bank issues pesos to buy Treasury bills and investment funds get rid of the securities to go to the checking accounts with which the banks end up depositing those surpluses in Leliqs.

The topic was analyzed in the other meeting that Pesce held and that was with the leaders of the investment funds. The ultimate commitment is that the Central will play as a buyer along the entire pesos bond curve to counter the massive sales of long-dated bonds in search of short bonds to reduce risk.

To the strong criticism of Cristina Kirchner’s leadership of her government in denouncing an “import festival” is now added the explicit recognition that dollars are not enough and that to pay for imported gas (the national would be but cannot move for lack of a gas pipeline) asks to pay the rest in small drops to avoid exchange jumps.

Furthermore, in the pesos segment, the state consolidates itself by buying the bonds that the state itself has issued because they burn in the hands of the holders and there are no other buyers in sight.