Daniel Fernandez Canedo
09/01/2020 - 19:14
Clarín.com
Economy
The Government managed to
clear
the maturity horizon with private creditors
for four years
.
Achieved 99% adherence to
debt swap
and took a step on the road to economic stability.
Will it succeed?
This path is long and difficult for an Argentina that carries decades of failures on its shoulders, but the high acceptance of the exchange opens a stage.
For the experts, now comes the process of settlement of the new bonds, which will take about 15 days until it is known at what effective level they are in the market.
By show of hands, market connoisseurs risk that the new titles that
start at US $ 54.90
for each sheet of 100 could after the settlement period remain at
US $ 49?,
Which would mark that the external interest rate for Argentina
would be around 11%.
This lightly calculated calculation arose from the fact that the new Ecuador securities that began to trade after the exchange of their debt, came on the market paying between 9.50 and 9.80% per year.
For
In Argentina, an 11% annual start-up
would be acceptable
, but that income would also be subject to the decision to sell by bondholders who entered the exchange but who do not want to continue with Argentine debt in their hands.
On the Government sidewalk, the celebrations for the exchange are capitalized by Minister Martín Guzmán who, in addition, won in the intern the position of having started from the hand of
Alberto Fernández
but now, and because of that success has many parents, and failure is an orphan, added the support of Cristina Kirchner.
Alberto Fernández with Cristina Kirchner, who returned to the Casa Rosada to announce the high adherence to the debt swap.
Photo Marcelo Carroll
The financial market reads that Guzmán's strength is also that of the permanence of the US $ 200 quota of
"savings dollar"
that savers have the opportunity to buy monthly.
The minister believes that the elimination of this quota (there the dollar costs $ 102.12)
would trigger the "blue", parallel or free,
which in the last 30 days measured between points remained around $ 135.
Inside and outside the Government there are voices that promote the elimination of the "savings dollar" from accounts that are easy to understand: there are more than
four million people
who have CUIT and a bank account that are able to pay 25% cheaper a dollar a month .
More than $ 4 million for $ 200 gives the Central Bank a predictable but worrying path of currency sales: about
$ 1 billion a month
represents a trickle that is difficult to sustain unless there is robust capital inflow.
The other exchange battle is in the
dollar "counted with liquidation"
in which the private ones buy and sell each other but in which, also after the exchange, the Central could intervene by selling the new titles.
Close to Miguel Pesce they assure that it could intervene if the CCL (bonds are bought with pesos and sold against dollars) maintains its tendency to capital outflow.
The possibility of Pesce selling the new bonds it has in its portfolio to lower the exchange rate gap could bring relief in the short term.
But the risk, as the economist
Rodolfo Santángelo
pointed out
, is that the Central will go back into debt with the use of the new bonds as before with the Leliq (liquidity bills).
For officials, lowering the gap between dollars (it is at 74%) is essential in the attempt to clear expectations that the government will eventually devalue.
For the deputy chief of staff, Cecilia Todesca, exchange controls "are inevitable."
Photo Clarín Archive
The Deputy Chief of Cabinet,
Cecilia Todesca
, said on FM La Patriada that "exchange controls in this situation
are inevitable",
underpinning Pesce's position regarding continuing with the daily updates of the official dollar (in August it rose 2.7% helping, in turn, to an estimated inflation of 2.5%) and trying to disarm the idea that the Government could resort to a devaluation to boost exports.
During the week the Government once again lit a candle to the
rise of soybeans
in the world market from the weakness of the dollar.
In the Central they are betting on a soybean of
US $ 360 per ton
as a way to compensate for the loss expected for corn and wheat exports as a result of the impact of the drought on the pampas.
Keeping the official dollar in line with inflation and taking oxygen from the "cash with liquid" is part of
the short-term tactic
in the attempt to improve somewhat the liquidation of exports that has been slowing down for some time.
According to INDEC statistics, the surplus between exports and imports is around US $ 1,500 million per month, but the balance of foreign exchange of the Central Bank
reaches almost half
and with US $ 750 million the demand generated by the "savings dollar" cannot be met. .
For the Government, and for a large part of the economists who follow the issue, the official exchange rate is not backward even though exports to Brazil have been falling for months due to an exchange rate lag, so lowering the "other dollars" will result fundamental to
erase the idea of the need to devalue the peso
.
The debt swap was successful but the pressures around the dollar require more certainty to counteract, among other things, the wave of uncertainty that official policy generates in the business climate in Argentina.