The dollar, a trickle of bad news for the Government

Pablo Ibáñez

09/29/2020 - 20:33

• Clarín.com

• Politics

"The dollar is a problem and it is not possible to tell bad news well

.

The phrase, almost a communicational commandment, was heard in an official office an hour after the decision of the Central Bank to restrict the purchase of dollars to employees who received ATP was revealed.

Everything related to the dollar became, they admit in the Government,

At the same time, Miguel Pesce is ratified as president of the Central Bank and he is relieved of specific responsibilities for what has been said above: it

that has plagued the government since he took office.

The president of the Central Bank, Miguel Pesce, during an announcement of restrictions on the purchase of savings dollars Photo: Raúl Ferrari / cf / Telam

In these hours, at the request of Alberto Fernández, the BCRA will issue a resolution with a global detail, and a certain pragmatic account, of the latest restrictions: the new one from the ATP.

This Thursday

.

The text, according to what was entrusted to

in Casa Rosada, will be known after the usual BCRA board meeting.

It will have, they explain, an informative purpose but it will also serve to encompass a series of measures that were taken in these weeks and that have a general line:

The government says that the ATP unifies criteria with other measures and that this has been under analysis for weeks but that first they opted for other mechanisms to lower the pressure on the dollar.

"The limitations will continue and we do not know until when" they warn from the top of the government.

Just as at the time a limitation was applied to those who charge the IFE and to those who obtained credit at a rate or to refinance a card (at a rate of 43 percent), now the government advanced a step that they say was inevitable: the workers of the formal sector that received part of their salaries in private companies with funds from the ATP program.

An attempt to tell unpleasant news that, Fernández repeats, is a toxic legacy of Mauricio Macri.

repeats the president, in public and in private.

According to the last detail, it is about

in the accounts of employees of companies that had zero or zero turnover compared to the same period last year.

"It is reasonable that those who receive funds from the State do not go to an exchange market that presents a difficult situation

,

explained an official source, the same one who understood that

"The limitations are going to continue, nobody knows until when" they warn the government and recall that at the beginning of the year two million cuits bought dollars and with the advancement of the months, the number almost doubled.

"It began to go down with the restrictions that are inevitable," confided the source.

Alberto and Cristina Fernándezt, and Sergio MAssa last August (Photo by Juan MABROMATA / AFP)

It was Pesce, in August, who put the gravity of the issue on the table.

During a meeting of the thematic cabinet of Foreign Trade, where Felipe Solá spoke of the project of the Agroindustrial Council to add exports, the head of the BCRA repeated what was a mantra at other tables: a gap of 20 billion dollars per year. 

"To normalize the economy we need 85 billion dollars but now 65 thousand are coming in,"

Pesce explained at noon on August 10, warning of how the purchase of foreign currency had increased, in particular the increase in individual buyers.

One of the arguments, perhaps peripheral, has to do with the fact that the dollar that tourists brought and feed the informal circuit stopped entering.

That collapsed as a result of the pandemic and the quarantine and there is no scenario that it can normalize in the medium term.

The government assumes that the dollar is and will be a problem although they are betting that other indicators will begin to give air to the economy to change the general climate.

They point to Creole history, Bimoneratism and the cultural factor not only of "taking refuge" in the dollar.

"The dollars are not enough and the ones that we have must be prioritized for the economy and to pay a huge debt that we inherit," they add.

These days, the Minister of Productive Development Matías Kulfas circulated in the cabinet a report with data on an increase in economic activity, based on the record of operations with Now 12, and the Deputy Chief of Staff Cecilia Todesca has a detail of How the number of requests for loans at tas dropped to 0 in these weeks: from 1.5 million people able to request it, only a third did so.