Juan Manuel Barca
07/25/2021 20:07
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 07/25/2021 20:07
The government will face a
key week
in its battle to contain exchange rate pressures.
After going out days ago to minimize the impact of the rise in the blue, officials came across an uncomfortable fact: with the blue at $ 185, the dollar is still in the center of the scene.
Therefore, the first thing will be to
"flatten"
the curve of these movements in the middle of the campaign.
"We are going to continue with the same strategy, there are elements to calmly bank the situation", they assure in the economic team.
The feeling in is that "with little it is ironed to blue" and they expect a
"downward rebound"
, as in last November.
"It is said that inflation is at 50% per year, the blue was at $ 195 10 months ago and today at $ 185, there was no worse investment," they explain.
However, they acknowledge that the tensions that began in April respond to a
"dollarization of portfolios"
and are closely following the new constellation of parallel prices after the regulations to limit operations with financial dollars.
"We monitor but it is not an issue that has a substantial impact," they say close to the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán.
In this scenario of supposed "tranquility", the Central Bank will continue to
buy and sell bonds
to contain the exchange gap, which in the case of the blue one already reaches 95%. According to the
private consultants, the sacrifice will demand between US $ 1,000 and US $ 2,500 million in reserves
in the second semester, a figure equal to or greater than the artillery used so far this year.
"Until now, the BCRA intervened with US $ 1 billion to calm the gap and, at an average rate of US $ 20 million a day from here to the end of the year, it would add sales of about US $ 3.5 billion in all of 2021," Equilibra estimated .
That amount, however,
would not be a problem for the Central with a stock of more than US $ 7,400 million of
net
reserves
thanks to the purchases of dollars.
In the first week of July, sales to control the Cash With Settlement (CCL) and the stock market dollar (MEP) consumed more than
US $ 20 million per day.
Concerned about the drainage of reserves, the authorities applied controls on July 12.
The regulation managed to slow the rate of loss of reserves, but the prices of unregulated dollars jumped.
The blue accumulated a rise of $ 17 -10% more- in July and the new measures kept the MEP dollar and the CCL below $ 167 in the place where the BCRA intervenes. The same did not happen in the bilateral negotiations segment ( SENEBI), where the wholesale operations were transferred and the Cash With Liqui already averages $ 179.
There, shares and Treasury bills also became dollarization instruments.
"The Central and the CNV
separated the retail demand
from the wholesaler, running large dollarization operations at a much higher price than we see on financial portals. These measures negatively impacted the market and is one of the reasons why the blue is going up, "explained Juan Pablo Albornoz, an analyst at Ecolatina.
Thus, despite the “fire power” of the BCRA, the difficulties in setting a reference price in non-regulated segments are growing. The growing exchange gap is an indicator of this. But there are also several readings about dollarization: while in Economy they believe that it could be due to local companies or funds, other areas point to the exit of foreign funds that were trapped, such as Templeton and Pimco.
In April, the consulting firm 1816 estimated that both funds had about 3,500 million in bonds in pesos linked to Cash with Liqui.
But economists don't think that's the main driver of dollarization.
"It is a structural demand, entering a second semester with less supply of dollars from the countryside and more pesos in the street, the Government is going to put all the meat on the grill for the elections," explained Federico Furiase, director of Anker.
In the Executive, however, they do not see that the unstoppable rise of the blue responds to an expansive policy in a context of "shortage of dollars", as defined by the Minister of Productive Development, Matías Kulfas.
"There is strength in monetary policy,
there seems to be no objective reason for a runaway dollar
," official sources said.
Look also
Is a dollar "re-high" to curb the exchange rate pressure?
The blue dollar rose 8% in a month: how it can impact inflation