In the last four rounds, the Central Bank (BCRA) managed to return to the market on the selling side of Dollars in the free and single exchange market (MULC) and yesterday he bought US$1 million, on Tuesday 2 million, on Monday US$7 million and US$3 million.
He Dolar blue reached $472 yesterday while the value of the wholesale dollar was $228 and the gap reached 105% while the CCL dollar reached $440 and the MEP dollar closed at $432.
The problem is that in front of a very low dollar offer in a month that seasonally there was always a high supply of dollars from the grain export sector that has been significantly reduced by the drought. In 4 days the BCRA only managed to keep only 13 million dollars.
Regarding the agricultural dollar liquidations The BCRA bought some 97.2 million dollars at 300 pesos per dollar and sold almost all those dollars at 228 pesos, therefore it loses 72 pesos for every dollar it sells that it receives from the agro-industrial export sector.
How many dollars did the farm liquidate in the last month?
Another fact that should be considered is that since April 12, when this third stage of the spread dollar there were liquidations for some 2,225 million dollars.
Despite these purchases, the BCRA kept 15% of those dollars that exporters sold it, as opposed to the 75% that kept the soybean dollar of 200 pesos in September and the 50% that it retained with the dollar 2.0 of 230 pesos in December of last year.
In the last four wheels, the Central Bank (BCRA) managed to return to the market on the selling side of dollars in the MULC
Since the beginning of the year BCRA It has sold some 3.2 billion dollars to intervene in the MULC without any positive result since the parallel dollar and alternative financial dollars rose in that period and the price of dollar bonds plummeted.
In this regard, a report by Portfolio Personal Investment describes that: “the sustainability of these neutral balances is questioned when it is observed that the settlement of agriculture under the “soy/agro” dollar has been decreasing, particularly in the last two rounds, being only US$35 and US$34 million (minimum values in 19 rounds except for “zero” of 04/19)”.
Agro dollar: what’s coming
From this it follows that the BCRA only sold to the authorized demand US$28 and US$51 million these days, compared to an average of US$155 in the seven wheels of the selling streak between 04/26 and 05/04.
When projecting the future and considering that the agricultural dollar ends in 14 days, it is difficult to think that a reduced demand for dollars like the current one will be maintained, it is difficult to imagine that the BCRA can face a major lawsuit if he recovers.
In relation to the evolution of the international reserves of the BCRA last Tuesday in the “Amcham Summit” Economy Minister Sergio Massa stressed that the decision was made to activate the Chinese swap for trade, which several of those who are here are starting to use for their foreign trade.” From April to August there will be fewer payments in dollars that will be made from the activation of the swap in yuan and, in addition, its subsequent renewal from the month of August, which is what was agreed with the Chinese Central Bank.
At that point he mentioned several decisions to try to prevent more dollars from leaving and in the financial aspect he highlighted the first very strong impact in April for the 1.4 billion dollars that stopped being pressure on the dollar because they were transformed into yuan. “The basket yuan so that it is understood from April to August it will be 5,000 million dollars, which is 5,000 million dollars less that come out as dollars from the BCRA reserves. “So far the operation is for US$5,000 million and also in June comes the renewal and surely the possibility or the Argentine opportunity to expand that operation.”
The BCRA retains few dollars from agriculture and Sergio Massa prepares more measures to stop losing foreign currency
IMF disbursements
Regarding the futures IMF disbursements The minister mentioned that Argentina has a credit operation with the Fund that at this time involves disbursement and reimbursement for payments of drawing rights.
But Massa surprised the businessmen by stating that there is a new operation underway that centrally involves the automotive and auto parts sector with another type of currency.
“I’m not going to bring details until we have it closed, but also somehow remove some of the uncertainty in terms of reserve pressure to achieve that framework of stability that we need for the end of the year,” Massa said before the eyes of some executives of American automotive companies who, when asked by Iprofesional, stated that perhaps the issue would be related to the swap in reais that the government would be negotiating with Brazil.
Regarding the NIR, Massa stated that the closing of 2022 had been with USD 8.8 billion of positive net reserves, basically the product of work carried out between August and December to try to recover and consolidate reserves, and the greatest drought in history appeared.
“One could say that out of 42,000 million dollars of expected production and exports, we are going to close the year in 27, 26, some say 24,000, with the impact that this has on the perspective of reserve accumulation. FMI described the drought as a game changer and this is a game changer, rethinking everything and obviously forces us to rethink everything,” said Massa.
New incentives?
The current stagnation of the exchange market indicates that the novelties must come from new incentives that accelerate the offer, making it obvious at this point that at the exchange rate of $300 the soybean producers They are not willing to sell against an official dollar of 228 pesos.
According to the latest report of Rosario Stock Exchangethe accumulated liquidation of this “soybean” dollar barely reaches 3.82 million tons compared to 5.17 in the second edition and 13.27 in the first.
Massa surprised the businessmen by stating that there is a new operation with the IMF underway
“The reluctance of the farmers to sell is more evident when considering that at carry from 7 MTn from previous campaign 8.3 MTn harvested from the current campaign have already been incorporated, leaving a potential of 15.3 MTn, of which only 25% was liquidated,” the report explains.
He himself adds that for now, the low soybean clearance It has been partially offset by the liquidation under the “agro” dollar of 0.6 MTn of sunflower (US$288 million), 0.45 MTn of barley (US$118 million) and 0.2 MTn of sorghum (US$47 million). . It also highlights that the 463 million dollars added by these three crops make up a liquidation exclusively for soybeans of US$1,658 million, to result in an aggregate of US$2,121 million that still falls behind the US$2,432 million of the “soybean” dollar. ” 2.
A fact that surprised the agricultural market
But the data that surprised the agricultural market It was a new grain production adjustment for this year of 1.5 million tons less and the estimate now reaches around 21.5 million tons, to which are added the lowest yields of the last 15 years.
For now, while the announcement of a new farm dollar it takes time to wait, in the agricultural sector they calculate that it should be between 330 and 350 pesos, the gross international reserves of the BCRA closed at around 33.7 billion dollars compared to the 44.5 billion dollars that existed at the end of last December while the reserves net international would be negative.
The economic team is in a kind of trap because to the extent that I know what set some basic economy prices Like the dollar, for example, this process tends to slow down inflation, delaying it for as long as possible, until finally the exchange rate delay is so great and forced that there is no anchor capable of sustaining it.
In this sense, and according to the vision of the economic team and some economists who are part of opposition technical teams Like Hernan Lacunza, Luciano Laspina and Eduardo Levy Yeyati, today a future devaluation of the dollar is seen as a problem and not as an obvious consequence of inflation, and this is what is responsible for the fall in real wages and not the increase in the dollar.
While the announcement of a new agricultural dollar is waiting, in the agricultural sector they calculate that it should be between 330 and 350 pesos
What does the market expect?
The big question of the operators of the local financial market and Wall Street It is whether the government finally manages to get the IMF disbursement advance for this year for some 10.8 billion dollars, which could improve the position of the net international reserves (NIR).
For their part, investors keep their eyes on the negotiations with the FMI to advance the disbursements and thus reinforce the level of net reserves, which today are in negative values.
It should be noted that the BCRA In order to meet the RIN goal for the second quarter of the year, the economic team proposed reaching some 5,000 million dollars for agricultural dollar settlements. This implies that he should buy about 190 million dollars a day between now and the end of the month, a figure that for now seems quite difficult to meet if we consider that in the last four wheels he accumulated only 13 million dollars.
