Mary Church
09/16/2020 - 13:10
Clarín.com
Economy
All the possibilities were on the table weeks ago in the question with the dollar.
But the official fear was the consequences that it could cause in the Argentine economy, already weakened, to adopt one or another measure of "shock": more gap between the official dollar and the financial and the blue, impact on the already high inflation and Expectations of devaluation were among the main fears.
They knew the situation was unsustainable in the official offices: the rate of bleeding of dollars in international reserves could not continue and
what had to be attacked was the gap
, in the first place.
The conditions to move forward with a "normalization" in the exchange market and remove the stocks were not yet in place, they evaluated.
Government sources assure that the measures were planned before the closing of the debt swap with the bondholders, an operation that occurred at the international level at the end of August.
And that there is and was coordination between the main actors of the economic team: Martín Guzmán from the Ministry of Economy and Miguel Pesce, as president of the Central Bank, beyond the logical differences.
Even with the measures already planned to tighten the stocks and restrict the quota of US $ 200, as it was known until Tuesday at least, it was agreed to put them into practice and announce them jointly with the presentation of the 2021 Budget project, which it was sent to Congress for treatment.
And although the Government recognizes that Guzmán said in an interview with
La Nación
last Sunday that
the quota of US $ 200 per month was not going to be touched, they
justify that with the changes implemented they
do not modify it
(although it is debatable by the consumption of services like Netflix and Spotify, for example) although they know that it does restrict it.
At the time that the Central Bank began a meeting with journalists on Tuesday to explain the new measures for the dollar, Guzmán mentioned: "We are facing problems in the exchange rate. The central problem is that Argentina needs robustness through the accumulation of reserves. international ".
And he advanced: "The BCRA will be announcing a set of measures that are part of this transition scheme that points to a horizon of macro robustness."
The official intention is, first, to reduce the exchange rate gap.
This Wednesday, however, the blue dollar shot up and hovers around $ 150, so the difference, at least today, is there.
But the idea is that once the new scheme stabilizes, with a gap of less than 70% that it touched in recent weeks,
interest rate signals can be sent to attract savers to the peso.
All in a transition scheme of the "super stocks".
Once the economy begins to accumulate reserves, which will have to come commercially, since the Government ensures that next year they will not go out to seek debt in international markets and that the dollars obtained from the International Monetary Fund will be only to repay the previous loan (that is, not "fresh" resources),
it will only be possible to think of a scheme of greater "normalization" of the current scheme.
However, something that many economists point out is that
a trap is easy to enter, but difficult to exit
.
In fact, the scheme that was in force until Tuesday was implemented by the previous government and it was thought of as a temporary one.
And today, even with the debt settlement achieved, the dollarizing appetite in the current economy is there.
And the stocks were reinforced.
NE
