What are the few ammunition that the Government has to stop the dollar

The Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, warned that the portfolio he leads and the Central Bank

to appease the skyrocketing of alternative dollars.

The Government has been doing this for months in the stock market, occasionally

to appease the price of the Cash With Liquidation dollar, which despite these maneuvers

The set of tools that the Government has at its disposal to face the currency run is

.

And the market knows that.

Today gross reserves amount to just over US$36 billion.

But those of free and above all rapid availability are much fewer.

Below is a review of the Central Bank's reserves, according to a report prepared by

from the

- On the side of the Central Bank, the market calculates that the organization chaired by Miguel Pesce has

It is a very small stock with which several mouths must be supplied, in addition to importers.

There are sovereign debts, of provinces, the own interests that are paid to the Monetary Fund.

Those would be the dollars that are closest at hand.

"Importers are last, and in fact sales to them have dropped dramatically in the last few days," an analyst said.

- There are also

They are about 11,000 million dollars and in truth they are dollars from savers who have their currencies deposited in banks.

It happens that the banks are obliged to immobilize the dollars that are not destined to finance lines of credit to exporters.

Reserves are computed as

but after all they are fungible and the Central Bank could use them if it so wishes.

- In this same category, but with more complicated access, are the

, for the equivalent of almost 19,000 million dollars.

There is another

for 3,000 million and a third swap with the company

(deposit guarantee) for 1,760 million dollars.

SEDESA depends on the financial system and in this case it is dollars that it had in its possession a few years ago and the BCRA took them on loan.

None of these swaps lend themselves to being easily and quickly converted to dollars.

The Chinese enable the swap to finance the payment of imports from China and its use has so far been marginal.

The swap with the Bank of Basel (Bank for International Settlements or BIS) are dollars lent by that institution that are deposited for a fixed term there.

Then there are the

(US$ 3,976 million that can be put up as collateral for a loan) and the

, the currency of the International Monetary Fund, which amount to 3,107 million dollars.

And finally there are the

that are distributed between the Central Bank and, fundamentally, the Sustainability Guarantee Fund that the ANSeS manages. These are the papers that have been used to appease the prices of MEP and Cash With liquidation dollars.

With little result, as seen so far.

These bonds

So, at market value, the public sector would have papers for US$ 6.8 billion.

If they are computed at 20% of their current value (they collapsed these days) that amount is reduced to

These papers are yielding a rate close to 60%.

Each bond that passes from the public sector to the private sector means that the net debt grows, that is, that which is in the hands of private creditors, who are buying bonds at auction prices.

The numbers show that the government's ability to intervene to stop a run on the exchange rate is very limited.

Hence the official desperation to get a boost of fresh dollars from multilateral credit organizations or even lines of direct financing from other governments.

Officials are already aware that, at least the IMF, would be reluctant to lend dollars for the government to sell at the current official market price.

In other words, they would demand that a larger devaluation of the peso be laundered first than the one that the BCRA has been doing up to now.