This Friday the Central Bank bought
1 million dollars
and with this it limited the loss of the first three days of the month to
US$ 35 million.
With no signs of currency settlement improving anytime soon, the government is facing another month in which the lack of dollars will impact imports and economic activity.
Despite the fact that Sergio Massa's team began the week empowered by the announcement that the Monetary Fund agreed to make the reserve goal more flexible for the first quarter of this year, the news faded as the week went by for two reasons.
The first was that despite the promises of the Economy,
the IMF did not make the change in goals official.
What has been announced orally so far is that the net reserve accumulation target for March 31, which was set at US$7.7 billion, has been relaxed.
Today the Central has US$ 4,500 million of net reserves.
"They are closing the program of reserves goals for the year with assumptions of a fall or increase in exports. I suppose that today it would be finished and on Monday they would announce," they said from Economy.
In this way, there are still no details about what this flexibility consists of or when it will become official.
The second reason is that although relaxing the reserve target relieves pressure in the short term,
it does not solve the central problem, which is the chronic lack of dollars that is hitting the economy.
From the LCG consulting firm, they suggest that February ends with a drop of
US$2.7 billion in net reserves
, due to foreign currency sales of almost US$1 billion, as well as payments to international organizations for the same amount.
So far this year, the drop amounts to
US$6 billion
as a result of both debt payments (US$3 billion to the IMF and US$1 billion to private bondholders) and foreign currency sales of US$1.1 billion.
Looking ahead to March, this will be partially offset by a net disbursement from the IMF of US$2.5 billion.
In this way, the shortage of dollars has no way of being reversed.
"Inflation remains high and the drought is hitting activity in what is shaping up to be a year of
recession and high inflation
," says LCG.
"The goal of reserves at the end of 2023 of
US$ 12,000 million
seems impossible, with the current
US$ 4,500 million
of reserves in the coffers of the Central Bank," says economist Fernando Marull.
The shortage of foreign currency puts pressure on the exchange market.
In February, the Central Bank had to sell US$889 million to contain the dollar and prevent the official exchange rate from escaping.
It was the worst result for the month in two decades.
Last month,
agriculture liquidated only US$653 million
and the Central had to allocate US$260 million to pay for gas imports.
The reduction in the liquidations of the field was felt on the collection that last month rose 82.5%, a fall of 9.5% in real terms with respect to the interannual inflation of February.
Now the Government is threatening to send the AFIP over to agricultural producers who, given the effect of the drought on their income and with the certainty that the Government will end up launching a new version of the soybean dollar, prefer to hoard grains in silobags rather than sell them
to the current values.
"Due to the lack of dollars that implied selling soybean stocks for US$ 5,000 million in 2022 with the soybean dollar 1 and 2, the Government asked the IMF to make the goals more flexible," concludes Marull.
"This is the worst year with the stocks for the accumulation of foreign currency by the BCRA. The stability of the exchange intervention in the last 10 business days would indicate
an increase in the tourniquet for import payments
. Something that we hope will be consolidated in the scenario of severe drought", they point out from Aurum Valores.
AQ
look also
The dollar lost the race against inflation in February: what is the strategy of the Central
Dollar today and dollar blue, LIVE: how much was it quoted and what was its price this March 3, minute by minute
