By Hernán Nessi
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 17 (Reuters) – The Argentine Commercial Exchange (ICA) would have reached a positive balance of 350 million dollars in the first month of 2023, after registering 1,102 million dollars in December, according to the median of a survey of Reuters.
The projections among nine local and foreign analysts also reflected an average surplus of 321 million dollars for the ICA in January.
“We estimate that the surplus was reduced to 350 million dollars, affected by the drop in agricultural exports as a result of the drought, although sustained by the continuous drop in imports,” said Isaías Marini, economist at Econviews.
The South American nation, the world’s leading exporter of soybean oil and meal, is facing a major drought that has been affecting the crops of local producers for months now.
The great disparity between the analysts’ estimates ranged between a maximum deficit of 327 million dollars and a maximum positive balance of 1,300 million dollars for the ICA in the first month of 2023.
According to official data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC), the South American country reached a trade surplus of 6,923 million dollars in 2022, compared to 14,751 million dollars registered the previous year.
“The prospects for the coming months are worrying, because harvest projections continue to worsen due to the lack of rain, and the government does not have much room to push imports without further cooling the economy,” added Marini.
And he remarked that “however, with a central bank without reserves, we believe that the government will end up adjusting the (exchange) stocks even more and implementing temporary exchange schemes such as the soybean dollar.”
Argentina implemented in September and December 2022 an increase in the income of its currencies by offering a differentiated exchange rate to encourage the liquidation of soybean producers.
The INDEC, according to its publication calendar, will release the official data on the trade balance for January next Wednesday afternoon.
(Reporting by Hernán Nessi; Editing by Jorge Otaola)
