2023-06-16 19:36:00
The Central Bank (BCRA) closed the last session of the week with sales of US$184 million, the largest amount in almost two months, to meet the needs of the market. In this way, it ended the second consecutive week with a negative balance of interventions of regarding US$200 million, despite the fact that it was mitigated by the income that a foreign oil company made between Tuesday and Wednesday to strengthen its investments in Vaca Muerta.
It is a “red” that is repeated following each end of the different versions of the “soybean dollar” and that greatly worries the market, since it happens when its net (own) reserve position is already negative by more than US$1.5 billion and on the horizon are more and more upcoming payment commitments assumed by the country for some US$2.7 billion with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and for another US$1 billion with the bondholders who agreed to the latest foreign currency debt swap for of interests.
All this, even though the BCRA kicked forward committed sales to importers already for some US$13,000 million.
Undoubtedly, the pressing situation of this holding is forcing the BCRA, once morest its will, to speed up the official devaluation of the peso.a variable that -measured by the selling wholesale dollar, which today closed at $249.45- updated at $1.10, or 0.44%, which implies an adjustment rate of “14.2% if it is monthly or 403 % if it is annualized”, explained very graphically the economist Salvador Vitelli, from Romano Group.
“The adjustment experienced today by the wholesale dollar is the highest for a trading day since the end of August 2019, except for those registered at each start of the week. In addition, it caused it to rise by $4.50 in the week that just ended, above the $4.10 increase registered in the previous week,” agreed the operator and analyst Gustavo Quintana, from PR Cambios.
The acceleration in the rate of devaluation of the peso is insistently demanded by the IMF, so it remains to be seen if the Government now applies it as an “offering” to try to unlock the negotiations it is carrying out with the organization to try to unlock the advance of the disbursements provided for in the agreement for the coming months.
From the monetary entity, now concerned regarding the impact that these strong sales have on expectations, they recorded that half of the sale of reserves for the day was linked to the payment of energy imports. “There were commitments to meet for regarding US$90 million,” they revealed.
Yesterday, with the same purpose, they had distributed a detail on the use of yuan for payments for imports from China (they used the equivalent of some US$529 million so far this year) just to “advise” that SIRA had been authorized since April in that currency for an amount equivalent to US$2.9 billion, something that will impact the local exchange market, on average, 90 days following they were issued.
In this way, they sought to remember that a larger part of the current demand for dollars will be replaced by yuan, something that should help to ease the drain on reserves starting next month.
“From the reported detail it appears that there were payments in yuan for the equivalent of US$154 million in May and for another US$287 million only in the first 10 rounds of June. And, indeed, in the last rounds there was a marked growth in the volume traded in the CAM1-CNH round of MAE, showing that the use of swap to finance foreign trade operations: it reached US$66 million on Tuesday, then it was surpassed by US$84 million on Wednesday and even more so by US$122 million yesterday that marked a peak”highlighted from Facimex Valores.
For now, and until that has an impact, it should be noted that the official contribution to the market resulted in the day being somewhat higher than 57%, considering that the volume traded in the spot segment on the day was US$ 320.8 million. , 26% lower than yesterday.
Of this total, US$15.738 million came from the so-called “agricultural dollar”, that is, they entered through the MAE’s “CAM 9″, the special wheel in which the only buyer is the BCRA but paying $300 for each dollar.
This is a clearly unsustainable proportion and one that leads some economists to wonder if a “soybean dollar 4” is not coming soon, as in the case of economist Amílcar Collante, from the Center for Southern Studies (CeSur).
But it is a number that might be repeated if the conflict that has paralyzed almost all the port terminals in the country continues. “The activity is affected by union conflicts that make normal operations impossible, affecting all types of ships that transport different merchandise, cereals, hydrocarbons, vegetable oil, fertilizers, automobiles, containers,” said the Chamber of Commercial Private Ports in a release.
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