11/24/2020 7:19 PM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 11/24/2020 20:04
Near the end of the year, the
$ 1,000 bills
became a desired prey for banks, supermarkets and businesses.
The curious fact arises from the fact that some local businesses, used to asking their customers to pay with "change", now prefer the $ 1,000 to a verifiable fact: the $ 100 bills that saw the light in December 1999 have remained
clearly outdated
in the face of rampant Argentine inflation in recent years.
Just by way of location of the issue, it is enough to take into account that if the original $ 100 bill from 1999 had to be updated due to inflation, its value
today would be $ 6,716.45.
The $ 100 bill, which in blue dollar terms represents 0.61 cents, now encounters resistance from banks not because it has lost cancellation power but because of
the discomfort and cost generated by moving large amounts
of monetary pieces.
It is common for the cashier
to offer cash to the customer
at
the time of paying at any supermarket
in what constitutes a certain habitual practice because for the trade the movement of cash represents a cost that it intends to avoid.
This is how the hoarding of
$ 1,000 bills
grew
, which also do not last long for families but do not generate bulk and are easier to transport and store.
The data is curious and becomes relevant with the arrival of the end of the year when there is an increase in the demand for tickets by families on the occasion of the holidays and the beginning of the
vacations that this year promise to be very different.
But the banks (due to the filling of the ATMs) and the largest businesses provision the end-of-year expenses and try to do so with the largest bills, which are not that big either since they
represent little more than 6 dollars
.
The timid $ 1,000 bill cruelly reflects the blows of an inflationary economy that seems far from being able to change.
This is what the 5,000 peso bill that the Mint planned to issue would look like
And of a government that, at the same time,
is reluctant to print higher denomination bills
(the $ 5,000 would be ready to be launched for a long time) considering that doing so would be an acknowledgment of higher inflation.
In this
atypical end of the year
that wanders between the pandemic, quarantine fatigue and the possible benefits of vaccines against the coronavirus, the delay that the government already discounts that the Monetary Fund will have to release some dollars that in the Central Bank is added. they wait anxiously.
So far in November, the Central Bank's reserves fell just over US $ 900 million and the entire government is aware that the next 100 days will be difficult in terms of foreign exchange earnings.
Although the government celebrates the appointment of Janet Yellen as Secretary of the US Treasury, considering that the former head of the Federal Reserve will remain in favor of an expansionary monetary policy at a global level.
It would consist of privileging the expansion of the economy over the fight against inflation, but that will not happen in the very short term.
Minister Martín Guzmán and the president of the Central Bank,
Miguel Pesce,
were hopeful of reaching a quick agreement with the Fund.
But the triumph of Joe Biden, who will only assume the presidency on January 20, delayed any definition.
Which Fund official would sign a loan to Argentina
without waiting for Yellen's opinion
?
What position will the granting of a loan to the country occupy among the priorities of the future person in charge of running the first economy on the planet?
That is why the next
100 days
are key to following the evolution of the Central Bank's reserves, even though the closure of the trickle and the strengthening of the stocks that Pesce built would allow the government to continue on the bridge until March when, hopefully, they could start coming in from the farm season dollars.
Sergio Chodos,
Argentine representative to the IMF, assured that the organization does not demand a devaluation from Argentina.
That may be very true but it is also true that with the current level of gap between the different types of dollar, the chances of the economy expanding are extremely
difficult.
The 21% drop in exports in October, the largest in five years, is relevant data on some of the consequences of a
difference of the order of 90%
(with the blue it is 98%) between the controlled and official dollar and the free types.
With gaps of that magnitude,
neither the exporters settle
even when the rise in the international price of soybeans may serve as an attractiveness
, nor do the importers stop their intention to accelerate purchases
abroad in the belief that the exchange rate jump is inevitable at some point.
The government resists a
devaluation
strong based on very noticeable consequences: a strong devaluation would have an accelerated transfer to food prices and would accentuate the poverty of an impoverished country.
In the report
"an adjustment on an economy that has already adjusted"
the consulting firm Analytica highlights about this year that: "the great fall in employment,
around 3.7 million,
occurred among unregistered workers: the self-employed, 1.8 million and non-formal wage earners, 1.9 million. Including the formal sector there are 4 million fewer jobs ".
With a devaluation, poverty would grow and with a 90% exchange gap the economy does not start and employment does not grow.
In the government's calculations, in the next 100 days, both issues will have to be closely followed.
