The rate hike had little impact: the blue dollar closed at $ 295

The blue dollar ended the week $ 295. After the 10-point rate hike ordered by the Central Bank, the informal rate fell by two points from Thursday’s price, although it remains three pesos above Monday’s level.

But the effect of the new reference rates on the market, which are now at 69.5%, was not felt on liquidity, the dollar used by companies, which makes 0.7%, for $ 2,842, while the MEP dollar rises 1%, to $ 280.

In this context, the Central Bank bought a million dollars in this wheel and tied three consecutive days of purchases, in which took $ 19 million in total. However, in the month it accumulates a negative balance with sales for 820 million dollars.

This Friday, energy importers asked $ 50 million, in a context of low market operations.

The wholesale exchange rate has ended $ 134.5. “In the week just ended, the wholesale exchange rate increased by $ 1.70, the largest weekly correction since that ended October 25, 2019, “said trader Gustavo Quintana.

there was alone ten operations of the so-called “soybean dollar”in the last 48 hours, a sign that the liquidation by operators continues to be contained.

The data shows that although the Central Bank has managed to stop the outflow of foreign exchange, it has not yet been able to build up reserves to cope with market demand and uncertainty.

The reservation dilemma

“In the exchange plane is where time passes fastest, the government already has almost no net reserves“, underlined by the Consultatio.

“The inertia given by the lack of measures responds to a macro limit – a devaluation of the official exchange rate is not practicable in this context -, and to other policies: advancing in an exchange rate split scheme requires the endorsement of the Monetary Fund , which recently this week has begun to discuss “, underline from the consultancy.

“Short termor we cannot rule out that the exchange rate stops acting as an anchor to act as a propellant of retail inflation“, highlights Consultation.

The effect of the rate hike

Yesterday the Central Bank announced that the reference market rate would be passed 60 to 69.5%. In turn, it raised the retail term deposit rate to 69.5% for amounts of less than $ 10 million. This represents a minimum monthly return of 5.7%,

For analysts, the rate correction is not enough. “The increase in the rate aims to absorb the pesos, either by remunerating those who immobilize it better or by making it more expensive to those who request it, none of this is useful if it is not accompanied by lowering emissions as much as possibleanalyst Christian Buteler said.

For economist Fernando Marull, “the rise in interest rates should bring some calm to the parallel dollar, but this does not lower expectations of devaluation of the official dollaras the Central Bank continues not to take vigorous steps to reverse the imbalance, either in the dollar price (devaluation or formal split) or anything to get more reserves.

Argentine bonds fell againwith decreases of up to 2%, which pushed the country risk to rise by 1%, to settle in 2466 basis points.

AQ