Another return to shares: they would bring the tourist dollar close to $ 290

With the focus on to curb the outflow of foreign currency even more to take care of the Central Bank’s reserves, the current price of the dollar card would have the hours counted. “We are working on overseas tourism measures,” say sources from the economic team.

Today the dollar or the tourist card is quoted $ 264. To arrive at that price, the retail exchange rate is taken today $ 149-, plus 30% of the PAIS tax and 45% of the profit advance.

According to reports, three options are under consideration. The first would be to increase again the withholding tax on personal income and assets, which in principle was 35%, and a month ago it reached 45% for expenses abroad.

The other is withdraw the rate on the PAIS tax from 30% to 40%.

And the third option, to which analysts put more chips, aims to force those who have dollar spending to purchase those currencies in the electronic payment market (MEP).

The MEP dollar is traded on the Buenos Aires stock exchange through the purchase of bonds or stocks in pesos and their sale in dollars. Today it is traded at $ 287. The transaction can be completed through a transaction with a brokerage company or through the bank.

In any of the three cases, it’s an increase of about 9% that would bring the card dollar closer to $ 290.

From the government’s point of view, the advantage of the MEP dollar, even if the operation could be more cumbersome, is that in this case the dollars do not come out of the reserves of the Central Bank, as happens today with the dollar card, but This is a private sale.

However, in the last few hours the versions of a rising tourist dollar have gotten stronger the definition could be delayed until next week.

Hand in hand with these rumors and the push to buy from producers who took advantage of the soybean dollar, this Thursday the MEP jumped 4.2%.

So far, a person who has a bank account can do some shopping abroad without having a single dollar in his account. The reason is that consumption outside the country can be billed in pesos, both at the exchange rate on the day if paid by debit card, and at the value on the closing day of the summary, if paid by credit card.

At the time of payment of the card, the balance is debited from the pesos account or the dollar account, at the customer’s choice. And the bank buys the dollars to transfer abroad. If the “MEP option” is successful, this exchange transaction would be carried out through the stock market.

With the exchange gap widening, what was happening is that many travelers kept dollar bills in their mattresses, they carded their travel expenses, and when the due date came they sold their dollars to the blue, which two months ago went as high as $ 100 pesos on top of the dollar paper.

Now, that gap between the blue card and the dollar card is flat: $ 276 versus $ 264only 12 pesos.

The latest dollar card data shows that in July it went this way 750 million dollars. And the figure could continue to rise with the Qatar World Cup in sight.

According to data from the Central Bank in the first seven months of the year, payments for travel expenses, tickets and cards by individuals and companies were overall 4,116 million dollars. The amount represents 65% of the fuel import spending in that period.

In the country of the short cover, the dollars that tourism takes are what the industry lacks.

From the manufacturing sector, which day after day fights with precautionary measures to get useless dollars to import supplies, those dollars that travelers take They put some salt in the wound.

The claim was heard by several organizations, such as the Industrial Union which stated “find solutions so that the industry has inputs, spare parts and machinery ”.

Last week, AFIP also kept an eye on the mono-tributaries who will go to the World Cup in Qatar.

The tax collector verified that of the 541 monotributors who bought tickets to go to see the Selection, 151 have no income sufficient to justify the purchase of these tickets.

AQ