Real economy dilemma: Are prices today set by the official dollar of $ 125 or the blue of $ 239?

The Central Bank is experiencing a mild e transient breeze of relief in the middle of one of the worst financial storms of recent times.

The team led by Miguel Angel Pesce managed to overtake $ 10 million the reserve accumulation target set for the first half of 2022 with the International Monetary Fund.

It was after accumulating $ 1,500 million in a week’s virtual exchange vacation from the interpretative brake generated by the resolution of last Monday, limiting the sale of dollars to imports and consolidating the restrictive scheme based on the fact that every importer gets funding to get dollars.

The exchange week, therefore, was characterized by the directors of the companies who analyzed the BCRA resolution at the same time as the shares and price lists, for which the key question was: What is the replacement dollar for the imported cost component?

The analysis brought to the present Alfonso Prat Gay’s October 2015 discussion, before he was Minister of Economy, that at that time the $ 16 blue dollar was very high (the official one was $ 9.50 ) and that with the new government the dollar was about to fall.

The feeling of that moment, and with another trap, was that prices had adjusted to the blue dollar, but the unification of the exchanges contributed a good share to which the inflation was 36% in 2016 with an increase of over 10 points compared to the previous year.

In the midst of uncertainty and the tightening of the trap, with 100% opening of the exchange gapcompanies and businesses are facing the dilemma of what dollar to take to list of products with an imported component.

The The government is unable to provide certainty on the dollar supply in the coming months and in fact the exchange surplus of the last few days has been favored by the delay in the entry of some gas ships which could not download due to operational problems.

In football terms, officials define the official strategy as “full bilardism”, which translated would be take care of the dollars one by one and sit on top of the box it being understood that the worst thing that can happen to the government is to go back to the limit of having no net reserves.

But it’s not the only major risk that the Government is experiencing these days in the economic area: the bond market in pesos remains at precarious balance after the crash three weeks ago when two government agencies went out to sell inflation-linked bonds e private sector alarms have gone off.

In recent days, and based on Central Bank purchases, Argentine bonds seem to have found a floor (low, but finally a minimum price) that it allowed the Central Bank to go out and sell part of what it had bought.

That Argentine bonds have auction price, and those of the dollar offer sidereal rents of the order of 40% per year, is a reality as palpable as the fact that no real buyer. Such is the distrust of the government’s ability to overcome the crisis that buyers, even of inflation-linked bonds that could reach and exceed 70%, remain reticent.

The rule used by the government these days indicates that when inflation-linked bonds were sold by the Treasury offer negative rates, the Central would go out to buy to support the prices. And at this point there is a delicate question: Minister Martín Guzmán resists increasing the rate of interest offered by these documents and, therefore, the road to stabilization could be bumpy.

On the threshold of second semesterwhich is that of the dollar shortage, since the field liquidated most of the currencies in the first part of the year, the exchange rate situation is once again precarious and the clear signal from the authorities is that another possible stock taking It presents itself as a threat in the event of a deepening of a crisis in which it overcomes the mistrust that the Government will be able to establish more or less clear rules to overcome the situation.