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The Government is now behind the fantasy of finding the price of the 'dollar-confidence'

2021-07-31T18:01:33.144Z


Faced with unsustainable exchange rate gaps and the risk of continuing to lose scarce reserves, the Central Bank tests what market price can serve to stop the ball. Meanwhile, the tale of reactivation is already tiring and is running out.


Alcadio Oña

07/31/2021 1:58 PM

  • Clarín.com

  • Economy

Updated 07/31/2021 1:58 PM

It is a riveted sentence, among independent analysts, say, that the reactivation is the reactivation of the true one and of which it matters if a few strong facts prove it and, above all,

if people perceive it in concrete things in their lives

. In other words, a few more points in the statistics are not enough, nor do they reach certain statistical exercises, to go off to beat the patch with which the recovery of the economy has

already been launched

.

Some of that happens today with the conclusions, half biased and interested, that are shaken after crossing the latest official data available from these months with their peers from last year, that is, comparing them with those that were sunk under the effects of the pandemic and an endless chain of restrictions and quarantine.

No mathematical finding

, the results of the game necessarily give what they should give: considerable leaps if they are read as the Government, in an electoral plan, intends to read them.

An example is

construction

, where 52% of last May reports impressive growth only because it competes against the equally impressive red of 50% of May 2020. With the signs also reversed, a similar case appears in 30 and 25% of the

industry

and another, in the plus 23 versus the minus 21% that are recorded for the

wholesale

and retail

trade

. These are three sectors that together represent a third of GDP and whose numbers, seen in a calm plan, do not show great differences in the end.

Even so, the picture changes, changes a lot or directly worsens if the focus is set in

May 2019 and May 2018.

So, we have the whole board in red or deep red: in construction, minus 22 and minus 25% respectively;

from 2 to 9% in industrial activity and from 3 to 13% in commerce.

They are downturns and more than downturns, because they are registered with respect to two recessive years and because the conclusion that follows warns that there are no signs of rebound in this panorama.

And what does it mean, then, that in 2021 GDP can grow around 6.4% according to the latest, improved estimate from the Monetary Fund?

It means, in principle, that it would be

3.5 percentage points away from recovering the 9.9% that the economy lost last year.

Also, that we would not even be at the 2019 level.

It is obvious that much cannot be asked of

an economy that flies so low when it is not crawling

, as one of those things that are missing and can really change people's lives proves it.

It is precisely what comes out of a report from the Ministry of Productive Development based on data from the AFIP.

It shows that despite the slight improvement this year, the figures for registered private salaried employment, that is to say, blank, sing

244,600 jobs less than in April 2019

.

A large number, in a space where if you want there is the best of the Argentine labor market.

The survey also says that only Tierra del Fuego and Santa Cruz break out of the fall;

that Buenos Aires, Córdoba and the Autonomous City are in the middle of the table and that in Mendoza the skid reaches 8.9%.

Without mentioning any type of recent progress, data now from INDEC reveal that between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first of this year

491,000 unregistered wage earners, in black, were left out of the system

.

In other words, outside a world of low wages, without retirement contributions, or health coverage or unemployment insurance and where the risk of being left on the street is an everyday thing.

It will not be enviable, but it is a world.

There we have a strong and direct impact of the crisis on two pillars that, together and at the same time very different, contribute 70% of the entire labor structure.

More of the same, the INDEC has just reported that in the twelve months ended in May,

inflation took 8 percentage points from the average salary: 48.8 against 40.7%.

And if the accumulated loss in the twelve months prior to this record is added, we already have a difference of 13 points in just two years.

Too much, for the demand economy that Kirchnerism proclaims.

With so many open fronts and so much pitch against it, it is understood that close to the Government there are those who advise

abandoning the story of the economic reactivation.

"It already tires of repetition, it sounds a little credible and above all it does not pay,

" they say.

On the advice of other close friends, a consulting firm is probing

how the economic situation is lived in La Matanza, in Presidente Perón, Almirante Brown

and in other large and diverse parties of the Third Electoral Section of the Conurbano. It is explained: always powerful in the electoral harvest of Kirchnerism, in the Third

there are more than 4 million essential votes.

Similar and at the same time different is the question and the test that the Central Bank and its adjacencies rule today. They propose, simultaneously,

what is the price of the dollar-trust and what is the price of the dollar-distrust?

Difficult if not impossible to know or rather a fantasy, when there are too many decisions and ups and downs of the Government that make noise all the time and that make trust a scarce asset and an unpredictable and elusive variable.

There is the test of the old blue, who seemed asleep and that suddenly,

in two weeks, hit a jump of 9%

as it had not hit since December.

Also the same exchange rate pressure, which these days forced the BCRA to sell around US $ 330 million when all it did was accumulate reserves.

And, in addition, the 80% ceiling that they want to put on the gap between the cash with liquidation and the official exchange rate, although government politicians and politics only have eyes for the blue that moves expectations and warms or cools the weather.

Two data in case they are needed: in the legal and highly controlled one counted with liqui the differential is around 66% at 77%, if the reference is blue.

Said wrong and soon and so that it is understood what magnitudes we are talking about, the exchange gap implies the gain that arises from not liquidating exports to the official dollar of $ 100 and selling the remaining currencies in any of the parallel markets.

Or buy at 100 to cover imports that have been inflated and make the same bike with the surplus.

They are examples and at the same time concrete cases in which the Central does not gain reserves and loses reserves.

No gap is good or tolerable

, it is known, but when it passes 30%, specialists warn that it has entered the red zone.

And what to say when it is, as it is, around 70 or 80%.

Wherever you look, some of the parallels that fix one of the bands appear.

"Between now and the elections, the government will have to deal with the dilemma of sacrificing the gap or sacrificing reserves," says an analyst.

That is, living with the upheavals and pressures derived from such currency mismatches or deciding to lose foreign exchange to avoid them.

A fight of the same type crosses inflation with the official dollar

and leads to an increasing exchange rate delay on the way to November 24.

It's another pressure cooker.

It is evident, in most cases, that the Government's strategy consists of

kicking problems forward

and it is also very clear that those same problems are shaking it in the present tense.

Obviously, putting them off does not mean solving them.

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Source: clarin

All business articles on 2021-07-31

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