Miguel Pesce and Daniel Funes from Rioja
The corporate sector is trying to get the Central Bank make circular A 7532 more flexible which, starting this week, has drastically limited access to foreign exchange pay for imports. Contacts with Miguel Pesce and the Minister of Production Daniel Scioli are constant and will continue in the coming days. For now, Pesce has planned to receive the COPAL -food- Wednesday or Thursday and, according to claims in the business sector, they will bring you alternative proposals that help avoid what they perceive as a “High risk of paralysis” of many activities.
Scioli, for his part, keeps his mobile phone open to “listen to everyone”, even if he tells everyone the same thing: that the country is going through a “bottleneck” for the overriding need to import energy, and who are confident that the situation will be overcome in the coming weeks.
In addition to the fact that officials accept meetings and open their agenda to write down sectoral requests, there is deep concern among business people because they feel they don’t have much room for maneuver to negotiate with their own. external suppliers. The situation is summarized as follows: “Nobody finances us for 180 days”This is the deadline set by the Central to give them the dollars to pay for the purchases they make, for example, today.
“There aren’t enough shares to hold, Most large companies work just in time, which consists of working with minimal inventory to reduce unnecessary costs by working withtherefore without accumulation of inputs”Summarized in a leading industrial company.
The 180-day deadline imposed by the Central is slightly shorter unattainable, they say in a company in the food sector. From what has been learned from this newspaper, COPAL will follow the request reduce the deadline for access to foreign currency to 90 days.
Other industries are proposing to split their dollars as follows: a 50% of the semester requirement now and 50% risk in 5 monthly installments.
Everyone tries to put together a “Payment plan” to avoid commercial breakdowns with its suppliers.
Until automotive sector, who had a predetermined plan agreed a week ago – which included financing from terminals to their suppliers – now have to sit down to renegotiate terms.
Due to the difficulties that await us, in the manufacturing sector we have already begun to talk “commercial default”. “They won’t sell us supplies because we can’t pay for a purchase we made in March and agreed to pay in June. Today they do not give us dollars, therefore we cannot pay ”they summarized in another company which is one of the main importers in the country.
The government needed to raise dollars these days to get closer to the reserve target agreed with the IMF. The photo of June 30 gave “past” as it was said at the Central Bank. Of course, at a very high price: he completely closed sales to importers and with that he managed to accumulate $ 1.5 billion in four days.
An important point was noted Clarione in its edition this Friday. On July 9, the government has to pay 700 million dollars in interest on local and foreign dollar bonds issued under the 2020 debt swap.
This Friday, with the change of the month, he was forced to sell $ 190 million, most to pay for imported energy.
“They may prove that they have achieved their goals, but at what price” asked an opposition economist.
According to the latest exchange rate report of the Central Bank, corresponding to May, the five sectors that used the most dollars to pay for imports in the first five months of the year were: Chemical, rubber and plastic industry (5,292 million US dollars); THEAutomotive industry ($ 5,152 million); Petroleum (3,532 million US dollars); Business (US $ 3,469 million) e Machinery and equipment ($ 3.376 million).
The impression of the industrialists is that there is a serious risk of disintegration of the productive apparatus and they imagine that the government should show signs of flexibility if it does not want to see factories paralyzed due to lack of supplies, with the social impact that this entails.
“The Central Bank must provide us with elements so that companies can renegotiate terms with our suppliers. Especially since our creditors have insured all the credits they have granted us in the export credit agencies. We can’t play with fire, we can’t risk falling into prolonged defaults because not a single screw is sent to us “
Source: Clarin
