After the criticism of Cristina Kirchner last week and with the endorsement of the economic team, the Central Bank (BCRA) will take several measures this Monday that will have as one of the main objectives that companies finance their purchases abroad with their own dollars -credits or houses arrays-. Along this path, it will add regulations to restrict “speculative” imports in a scenario of falling reserves.
The entity led by Miguel Pesce intends that imports be financed by commercial loans abroad or by the parent companies until the most acute moment of energy purchases abroad passes. This would be until the next spring. Pesce had anticipated something on Friday at a lunch at the Ministry of Economy with important mass consumption and food companies.
So at the BCRA they said: “Since the pandemic, commercial credit has fallen by US$4 billion. The BCRA has been working to recover that credit. Since March, some US$1.8 billion of imports have been financed. We work so that this financing grows”.
“Everything leads to avoiding speculative imports. There are several modifications that are coming”, advanced to THE NATION regarding new measures. The possibility of adding more products to the 180-day financing scheme was also mentioned. These are already called SIMI “B”. For importers, it is a possibility that leaves them directly out of the foreign trade market. It is a closure of imports.
Today this medium anticipated that the entity led by Pesce, which has been holding meetings with Martín Guzmán and Daniel Scioli, will establish a new scheme today for purchases abroad that will prioritize industrial inputs for production, purchases of energy and fertilizers.
Scioli had already advanced something in a meeting with the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) last week in a business raid following Cristina’s request. The justification was heardhe food and mass consumption companies last week in a meeting with Pesce and Guzmán in the Treasury Palace.
“There was no specific mention that there will be no more dollars to import, but what did exist was a request from Pesce so that the companies that managed to get out of debt use their own dollars to import,” said a businessman who participated in the lunch with Guzmán and Fish.
Despite the fact that today in the Ministry of Economy and Productive Development they did not give details of a possible announcement this Monday, in the BCRA they did not deny it by paying for the possibility of adjusting the trap once more. “It cannot be that the purchase of perfumes, whiskey and cigarettes in the Ezeiza freeshop is financed in the official dollar. There is a shortage of dollars and these are going to be prioritized ”, they emphasized near Sergio Massa in the week.
“Morning [por hoy] come out with news for the payment of imports. They will go out with pointe boots”, counted today in an Argentine multinational company. There they talked regarding measures once morest overinvoicing and kept an eye on Tierra del Fuego. For weeks the government speaks of “speculative imports”.
“We believe that it may be a deepening of Circular 7466 (which established a categorization of SIMIs and deepened the trap)”, they said in another company. “We hope that they do not discriminate once morest any sector and that they focus on the productive sector so that the wheel can continue to turn,” they added.
The BCRA had to sell US$95 million on Friday; in the week it lost US$250 million and in the month it accumulates losses of US$600 million. All in thick crop clearance time.
Last week, Vice President Cristina Kirchner had denounced an “import festival” and had urged President Alberto Fernández to “use the pen” to stop it. However, the data of the Ministry of Productive Development deny the former president. Imports in relation to GDP are at 24.2%, practically the same level they had between 2014 and 2015, according to the portfolio that Scioli directs and in quantities, import levels so far this year are 5.4% lower than the average of 2017 and similar to those of 2011, according to data handled by the consulting firm of Dante Sica, former Minister of Production during the administration of Mauricio Macri.
Nevertheless, Energy imports jumped last May, according to Indec, by 226.7% mainly affected by international price increases following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This determined that, in that month, foreign purchases set a historical record of US$7.87 billion.
Despite the record liquidation of the field and the extremely high price of the raw materials that Argentina exports (this year it is expected to reach a maximum peak), the BCRA cannot accumulate reserves in times that, seasonally, should be prone to that. In fact, the Ministry of Economy had to agree with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to change the goals for the second quarter, including the accumulation of dollars in the Central Bank’s accounts. It also modified the fiscal path. In the Government, according to the decree published by DNU, it is expected to maintain the annual objectives of the program.
The financial instability of recent days, the jump in the dollar (and the gap) and the situation of the reserves will lead the Government to adjust the stocks, which may cause a slowdown in the economic recovery in the medium term. For this year, GDP growth of 4% is expected -largely due to dragging.