Of the latest soybean crop, 40% remains unmarketed and the government is placing credit restrictions on producers who hold more than 5% of their stocks.
The tide of dollars that came in this week for soybean exports, over $ 1,698 million, does not seem to reach the government. Because the Central Bank (BCRA) has raised the interest rate, up to 83%, for all types of credits taken by those producers who have not sold 95% of their soybean crop. The measure, announced this Thursday, resulted in a general rejection of the Liaison Table and analysts linked to the sector.
“It’s a priceless and totally negative rate, Jorge Chemes, President of the Argentine Rural Confederations, told Clarín. He considered that “if the government tries to encourage the producer to sell, this is not achieved. It is contradictory, it does not help at all what one seeks. These are measures that do not generate the necessary confidence ”.
Indeed, this pressure is not a voluntary incentive, but it could lead to selling more crops, according to the government’s perspective. But several rural rumors warned that the producer was “getting mad” and that the “dollar-soybean” would retreat to $ 200, which has so far been widely accepted.
“It’s a ridiculous contradiction, a disastrous mess on the part of the Central Bank,” shouted Carlos Achetoni, head of the Argentine Agricultural Federation.
The decision of the monetary authority establishes “a minimum interest rate of 120% above the LELIQ rate for soybean producers”. As this rate today is 69.5%, the percentage set for soybean producers remains at a nominal annual rate of 83.4%, but the real rate when adding other bank costs is close to 90%, around 20 points more than official inflation.
In Communication “A 7600”, the BCRA board indicated that “it will be applied to all credit lines in pesos, whatever the form of instrumentation, and is complementary to the program launched by the Government so that producers can liquidate foreign currency for the soybean exports at 200 pesos per dollar “.
For the president of the Rural Society, Nicolás Pino, “it is more interventionism in the markets, which causes more distortions. The rules must not be altered and must be fair, because in this way the functioning of the chain is complicated and altered.
He stressed that “not only are tariffs changed to levels exceeding 150%”, they also intend to force us to sell all production “.
“It’s a financial repression,” said economist Hernán Satorre, director of AmplificAgro. And he argued that this should be called when the government insidiously takes wealth from the private sector to finance its debt.
He said that “it is a form of coercion, the use of force to force food producers to do something against their will. These are policies that channel funds to the government that in a deregulated or non-intervened market would have taken another direction.
A curious fact about this measure of pressure from the government is that the record day for field foreign exchange settlement in 10 years was set: $ 623 million in a single day, which brought currency gains to 1,698. dollars in 4 working days this week, after Economy Minister Sergio Massa announced the “dollar-soybean” at $ 200 on Sunday.
Maurizio Bartoli
Source: Clarin
