Annabella quiroga
12/14/2020 10:20 AM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 12/14/2020 10:20 AM
In the 2020 race, the blue dollar is two laps ahead of inflation.
From the start of the year until the first half of December it
rose 92%
and it is not expected to derail too much in the ten business days
until the
end of the year.
Regarding prices, up to October
accumulated inflation reached 26.9%
.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, the data for November will be known, which according to the consultants will be around 3%.
And according to the Central Bank's market expectations survey, the year will end with inflation of 36%.
"This year
the blue will rise almost 100%
and inflation will be 37%, and next year the market discounts 50% of inflation. The blue in 2020 rose due to the inflation of this year and that of the year that It's coming, "said the economist Fernando Marull, director of the consulting firm FMyA.
The blue rose more than the rest of the dollars.
It went from
$ 77 on January 2 to $ 148 today
.
It began to escalate in April, when the effect of social measures due to the pandemic and the quarantine led to a greater issuance of pesos and, at the same time, isolation left more money available to allocate to the dollar.
It made a first peak on May 15, when it touched
$ 138,
and another on October 23, when it reached
$ 195
, already with the greater restrictions set by the exchange rate on the official dollar.
Since then it began to retrace the climb and since December 4 it has moved
below $ 150
.
With this tour, the blue comfortably beat the rest of the dollars.
The savings dollar rose 75%
, went from $ 82 to $ 144. And financial dollars, both the MEP and the cash cash,
increased 79%
.
The deceleration of the blue in the last month of the year was influenced by seasonal reasons.
"We all know that the
seasonal demand for pesos
is high in December and January and then, starting in February, it begins to decline and the exchange rate pressure begins to rise," says Marull.
Certain government measures also influence this exchange rate.
"They changed the signals a bit: they
intervened in the cash market with liquid
, put more stocks to stop the fall in reserves and gave some fiscal signal. Today we have that the Central Bank sells reserves but with a trickle. Deposits in dollars began to rise and the seasonal demand for pesos and the fiscal signals out there are a little better. That is for the short term. For the future,
there is a long way to go to eradicate an exchange rate run
, "says the economist.
How will inflation move from now on?
The consulting firm LCG estimates that going forward there will be "a cruising speed of 3.5% monthly inflation.
The Government enters a new year without an anti-inflation plan.
2021 will come with an additional injection of pesos that validates an inflation that we already project in at least 55% annually ".
To stop the escalation, one of the alternatives is for the government to bet on an orthodox policy.
In this case, according to LCG, "the anti-inflationary policy will tend to be guided by
monetary dominance
given the context of the impossibility of resorting to external financing and considering the small domestic market, which will impact the pace of recovery."
Another option would be to
use the exchange rate as an anchor
.
"But that generates an anti-export bias, especially considering that, in the best of cases, the real exchange rate has nothing left over," LCG remarks.
"An extreme alternative could be dollarization, but today it is impractical. There are no reserves in the BCRA," they argue.
If everything continues as if nothing, "that will generate
deeper distortions
for the period 2022-23".
The background to the race between the dollar and inflation for 2020 is played largely around reserves.
From Ecolatina they point out that in the entry to 2021 the economy is "a little less hit, and there are even
some prospects for recovery
on the real side."
The worrying thing is that the stock of net reserves is
below US $ 4,000 million,
which "causes a lot of uncertainty."
Under the hypothesis that the vaccination campaign against Covid will be quick and effective, "
the fate of next year will depend on the exchange rate battle:
if the run does not stop and there is a devaluation, the tepid signs of improvement will disappear once again; On the other hand, if the Central Bank's strategy ends up being successful and the jump in the official dollar is avoided, it is likely that the recovery will strengthen month by month ".
AQ
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