Pressure on the dollar: Miguel Pesce insists “there are speculative maneuvers”

After an intense day in which the blue dollar remained under pressure and closed with a rise of 6 dollars, almost 240 dollars, the head of the central bank, Miguel Angel Pesce, reiterated last night that the new import restrictions aim to deactivate “speculative maneuvers”.

“What happened is that Argentina has grown steadily last year and continues to grow this year, unemployment has fallen, wages have been sustained and which puts a strain on the two areas in which the country has always shown weakness: the external sector and the energy sector “specified the head of the BCRA.

In this sense, he explained: “The Argentina must import energy in a context where international prices have risen due to the war in Ukraine. This has strained the foreign exchange market and what the Central Bank has done, to avoid having to extend recessive or devaluation measures, is to ask importers to finance the increase in their exports this year. “

In this order of things, Pesce has ruled out that the measures are a new trap. “No, we have not limited imports, what is asked is that the increase in imports be financed this year”, has indicated. And he reiterated: “What we ask for is not impossible”.

Regarding the “import festival” that Cristina Kirchner spoke about last week at the CTA, the head of BCRA assured: “The opinion of the vice president is very valuable, spoke of the need for coordination of different organizations of the state to prevent abuses that could occur in imports, which we are doing ”.

For him, “the problem we have is that due to international growth and prices we have a very high level of energy imports; we have to find a solution to this: ask importers to finance the increase in imports ”.

The head of the Central Bank, Miguel Pesce, intervened after the dollar hit a new high following the extension of restrictions on importers. And when asked about the free dollar, he said, “It’s hard to know how far the free dollar moves because it’s illegal. but let’s assume he moves a few million dollars a day. “

In a dialogue with public television, Pesce also quantified how much the legal dollar markets move: “Cash with liqui moves $ 60 million a day; and the official foreign exchange market moves $ 1,000 million a day. They’re markets. insignificant, “he said. And then, in that sense, he assured him “Any speculative maneuver in both moves the exchange rates up or down.”

“There are speculative maneuvers”he assured, and the product of these maneuvers is that in a small market any movement becomes complicated. For Pesce, what Funes de Rioja does not say is that there is pressure to devalue ”. “The effort to sustain the exchange rate is better than a devaluation jump like the one in 2019”he pointed out.

What the president of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) Daniel Funes de Rioja said: “Production must not and cannot be interrupted, if the production process is interrupted, the reactivation cannot take place “. To this, the head of the Central replied that “the commitment of the Government it is about growth, production and maintenance of employmentbut for this we need foreign currency ”.

Regarding the conclusion, the head of the Central Bank stated that “the Government is reducing the fiscal deficit and monetary financing to achieve a virtuous situation in which public spending is financed with taxes”. But he recalled that “the monetary question that the State should have made during the pandemic was to support the production system in a context of very serious crisis.” Otherwise, “the social consequences would have been very serious”.

When asked what will happen to the gap, which is now at 90%. “To the extent that we can overcome this stressful situation which arose due to the need to pay for unusual energy imports, we will return to a normal situation in the foreign exchange market and that will have an impact on these types of exchanges that suffer speculative shocks, “he said. And he concluded: “I expect financial exchange rates to pick up and go down, even if with these speculative moves it’s hard to predict.”

YN