The International Monetary Fund continued with its policy of turning a blind eye to government defaults and endorsed a new round of partial devaluations to replace an outright devaluation of the peso.
Circumstantial ally of the government of
Alberto Fernández, Cristina Kirchner and Sergio Massa
, the IMF accepts a new round of soybean dollars, in this case an agricultural dollar of $300, which implies a 42% rise in the exchange rate, while making the reserve accumulation goal at the Central Bank.
At the end of March it should have raised
US$5.5 billion and now it only has to show US$1.9 billion
but, despite the readjustment, the government
would not have arrived either.
The net reserves of the Central Bank ended in March at
US$ 1,840 million
.
And if it did not reach it in the first quarter, it will be more difficult for the government to comply with the accumulation requirement for the second quarter, which amounts to
US$6.76 billion.
The government argued that the lack of reserves was due to the fact that
the drought reduced the forecasts of the harvest by 35%
and the IMF had recognition, although it fell
quite short
in the calculation.
For the Fund, the loss will be
US$6,000 million
, while market calculations place it
between US$17,000 and US$20,000 million
.
The gap is large and the Minister of Economy redoubles requests for help at this time.
The announcement of the $300 agricultural dollar that governs the liquidation of soybean exports until May 31 and until August 30 for products from regional economies is effectively starting right now and opened a decompression window for producers
and
exporters They had been waiting for the measure for
weeks.
Regarding the specific contribution of foreign currency from this sectoral devaluation, a report by the EcoGo consultancy says: "it could liquidate foreign currency in the short term
between US$5,600 and US$7,400 million
, of which the Central Bank would be able to retain between US$3,300 and US$4.9 billion.
And he adds that
only by reaching the highest currency settlement values
could the Central meet the IMF goal.
Doubts about the accumulation of reserves added to the request to reduce the goal of beneficiaries of the pension moratorium and about the true negative impact of the drought would have led the IMF to modify its forecasts for the Argentine economy this year.
In the first revision of the 2023 forecasts, the IMF
lowered the growth target and increased the inflation target
, coinciding with the reset of the estimates by Argentine analysts.
The Fund believes that inflation
would go from 79.6% to 88%
and that the economy, which previously thought it would grow 2% as a result of a statistical drag, would now improve
only 0.2%.
The IMF forecasts are part of what could be called
political correctness and moderation.
For weeks, local forecasts have placed inflation at a floor of 6% per month (on the order of
100% per year
) and a drop in activity between
2.5 and 5 points,
also based on the drought and now with the addition of the agricultural dollar. about the cost of living.
The calculation of the additional issuance that the new agricultural dollar will demand (the Central has to issue $300 instead of $213 for each dollar exported)
is around $1.5 trillion
, which will be added to the mass of interest accrued by the Liquidity Bills ( Leliqs) and other liabilities of the Central Bank.
With $12 trillion of Central Bank liabilities that every month accrue a rate that on average could be 70% annually (The Leliqs pay 78%, 6.5% monthly) they generate a threatening
mass
of pesos.
According to the Central, these liabilities do not constitute a great danger as they are
the other side of time deposits from companies and depositors
who seek profitability even when the income obtained is below inflation.
They are confident that the government will not end up devaluing and, therefore, the gain from the fixed term will exceed the change in the dollar.
While waiting for the result of the agricultural dollar to begin to show a Central Bank with a
clearly buying
result in terms of foreign exchange, political times take over economic concerns.
There are just over 70 days left until
June 24,
when the candidacies for the August primaries will be made official and a part of the business world is closely following the possibility that Sergio Massa is a
candidate
.
The minister has not given any indication as to whether he would leave his post, but the inflation data for March (estimated at 7%) sets a bad precedent for thinking that the cost of living for April will start with 3 , as he had
predicted
.
Massa awaits his
operational outcry
by the trade unions for next week.
The exemption from Earnings for some items of salary income, the quarterly parities and the promise that it will seek that salary increases exceed inflation are combined with the search for dollars at the IMF meeting in Washington.
Everything is to
arrive with the dollars until the end of June
and despite the fact that the private sector continues to accumulate arrears in the
payment of imports
.
That commercial debt is around
US$34 billion
and it is difficult to find cheap dollars to pay it off.
