Martín Guzmán got the pesos he was looking for: he reissued a debt linked to inflation

After the massive outflow of funds from pesos bonds and the sustained intervention of the Central Bank to avoid the default of that debt, the government placed $ 248 trillion this Tuesday and covered the deadlines of the week. It has thus overcome a litmus test, without completely dispelling the doubts about its ability to self-finance in a second semester with higher tax demands.

“The result was positive for this race and also for the month. In both cases with positive net funding, meaning that more than what was sought was obtained “reported the Ministry of Economy. Martín Guzmán closely followed the auction with his Finance team, in the midst of a hectic day on the financial markets after the tightening of import restrictions.

The measures announced on Monday stopped overseas payments and triggered parallel dollars. Blue jumped from $ 7 to $ 239, while the CCL hit a nominal record of $ 250. The new corset allowed BCRA to buy $ 400 million on the official market in the first two rounds, but impacted dollar bonds, with declines of up to 3.3%, and brought country risk to 2,508 units.

In this context, the Treasury covered maturities of $ 243 trillion and obtained an additional amount, equivalent to a Renewal rate of 102%., still below the levels of the beginning of the year and far from the target agreed with the IMF. All this despite the help of the Central Bank, which last week raised rates and made it possible to reduce payments by more than 50% in the bond swap.

For this reason, although it has been estimated that 90% of the maturities were in private hands, some analysts believe that there was greater public sector participation than expected and that the level of renewal of the debt is lower than that communicated by the authorities if the interventions of the BCRA are updated with the purchase of over 600,000 million dollars. The other fact is that although the Treasury has raised rates, the market believes that “there was no premium.”

Guzmán tried to stay calm last week when he promised the banks a more “orthodox” course in tax matters, as portrayed by an executive, while BCRA chief Miguel Pesce promised Monday to support bond prices ahead of Common Investment Funds. “Weak, but much better than expected. The goal with the IMF requires 130%, the outlook is very uncertain”, they assessed in a bank.

Of the 9 securities offered this Tuesday, the bulk of the funding obtained by Economy was concentrated in those with a duration until 2022, without being able to place a longer debt. Half of the pesos came from inflationable bonds (CER), with positive average rates of 2.9%, an alternative that was the spearhead of the financial program, but has not yet recovered its values ​​since June after the disarmament of 500 billion. dollars.

The other half of what was awarded, meanwhile, went to Liquidity Bills and Discount Bills. In addition, a dollar-linked bond maturing in April 2023 and another similar bond maturing in April 2024 were reopened, which remained nil. “This shows that the two-year peso market is practically closed, with both CER and Dollar Linked,” said economist Jorge Neyro.