Juan Manuel Barca
09/05/2021 20:25
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 09/06/2021 7:18 AM
Due to the greater demand for dollars in the run-up to the elections, the Central Bank began to face
a
more challenging scenario in September
with an impact on reserves.
Last week, up to US $ 500 million had to be disposed of to contain the different dollars
, a level that lit red flags and was accompanied by a slight slide in the exchange rate.
The monetary authority stopped buying dollars in the exchange market and began to make net sales of almost US $ 90 million a day in the last week and allocated US $ 10 million to control the gap, in a context of
lower supply of foreign currency due to minors liquidation of agriculture, the increase in the deficit in tourism and the higher interest payments
on the debt.
"In the last five days the Central accumulated net sales for US $ 360 million in the MULC (exchange market). If we also add the daily intervention in the bond market to control the gap,
the monetary entity resigned about US $ 500 million in the last week to reach the elections with an exchange market without turbulence,
"warned a report by
Equilibra
.
The private consultancies agree that
the drainage level of the last week "is not sustainable" given
a limited stock of net reserves that, according to the calculation, oscillate between US $ 6,500 million and US $ 10,000 million, after the injection of the SDRs. of the IMF.
And they observe a slight acceleration of the official dollar to reduce the loss of reserves, without ruling out new restrictions.
In the last week, the official dollar went from $ 97.57 to $ 97.87, an increase of 30 cents
.
Miguel Pesce stepped on the dollar and kept it below inflation to slow down price increases.
Now, according to Econviews, the Central Bank seems to have abandoned the 12% annualized devaluation of June, July and almost all of August, for a 17/18% devaluation in the last five wheels.
"They
accelerate the rate of devaluation because to keep the dollar at 1% per month they should sell more reserves and they do not have
. September will go to 1.5% and it is necessary to see if they can hold out without selling so many reserves. In the coming months, the BCRA it will sell an additional US $ 1 billion and in order not to sell more, they can put new regulations or stop more imports, "estimated
Andrés Borenstein
, chief economist at
Econviews
.
In July and August, the government already imposed measures to limit dollarization in the financial market. Now, in the
face of a more demanding dynamic due to greater exchange rate pressures, analysts believe that the next target will be imports
. That item took US $ 5.7 billion in July, approaching the "psychological" ceiling that the Central is willing to tolerate.
"The BCRA in August again lost currencies, the last week it sold more than US $ 420 million and because of the gap it used between US $ 40 and 50 million so that the exchange rate of the CCL (Cash with settlement) does not escape . it
is probably not by restrictions and financial side but imports
"estimated the deputy director of
EcoGo
,
Sebastián Menescaldi
.
For Martín Vauthier,
the exchange rate hike "comes a little faster" and "is likely to move faster if exchange rate pressure grows without signs of an agreement with the IMF."
"The important sales of the last few days are not sustainable," said the Anker economist.
Likewise,
"this is not going to validate a significant acceleration in the rate of devaluation, before they are going to restrict imports,
" he predicted.
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