If there is a characteristic common to bankers, it is pragmatism with an eye toward defending shareholders' equity.
And if there is a principle for a Secretary of the Treasury of a country, it is that
debts are not to be paid and canceled, but to be refinanced
.
These two principles will intertwine in the debt swap in pesos that Minister Sergio Massa finished negotiating with public and private bankers to move to 2024 and 2025 the Treasury bonds that mature between April and September of this year.
For this voluntary exchange, Economía presented a menu of CER-adjusted bonds (inflation) with surcharges ranging, depending on the term, from 3.75% to 4.25% and dual bonds (the highest between inflation and devaluation).
The debt to be exchanged is close to $7 trillion
and private banks say that their bond holdings represent "only" 20% of the total and that the rest is in the portfolio of public banks and state agencies, mainly ANSeS.
Based on these assumptions, the bankers are betting that the demand for new bonds will be 80% directed towards CER-adjustable ones that, of course, will have
inflation incorporated at maturity that is estimated at 100% by 2023
.
The launch of 100% annual inflation-adjustable bonds speaks for itself
of the commitment to issue pesos in the future
in a context that had already been compromised.
The weekly report of the Capital Foundation maintained before the announcement of the swap that "
the $13.8 trillion that matures until the end of the year
" found a marked in which "the appetite of the private sector is decreasing" and that the participation "of the Central Bank added to that of public entities derives in a debt market with more and more captive holders".
This result reduces the risk of reprofiling the debt in the future, although with
"a significant cost in terms of issuance."
The exchange also ratifies the role of buyer of last resort for the bonds by the Central Bank if prices collapse, an action that has been going on for a long time and to which the International Monetary Fund appears to be turning a blind eye.
With this exchange, in the case of being accepted by the majority, the government
would be able to overcome the financial "wall"
generated because the Treasury had been borrowing more and more at shorter terms and paying more dearly.
Now it is evident that the cost to pay both in terms of rate and implicit issuance
matters much less to a government that passes the buck to the one that follows
with a snowball in the interests that start in the heat of 100% inflation .
Public bodies will maintain the fiction of refinancing and banks will have juicier bonds in their portfolios, even if they are pesos.
Sergio Massa tries another financial move after the failure of the bond repurchase and the attempt to obtain US$ 1,000 million from an international bank and has already announced that differential dollars will come for wine and for regional economies.
Everything is to avoid devaluing and keeping the official dollar behind
in the electoral year in a desperate attempt to contain an inflationary jump that, together with the impact of the enormous blow of the drought, projects a very difficult 2023.