The Ministry of Economy decided to implement a battery of measures starting tomorrow, with the aim of stabilize exchange ratesincrease the interest rate to make placements in pesos more attractive and accelerate agreements with multilateral organizations, to which initiatives will be added to sustain the level of consumption and the level of activity.
The announcements will be made official tomorrow and from the Palacio de Hacienda they maintain that more measures will be announced during the week.
Also read: Massa called for a 90-day price and wage agreement to stabilize the economy
The measures were defined yesterday afternoon, within the framework of the meeting led by Minister Sergio Massa and in which the Secretary for Economic Policy, Gabriel Rubinstein, was present; the portfolio’s chief adviser, Leonardo Madcur; the legal and administrative secretary, Ricardo Casal; the president of the Central Bank, Miguel Pesce; the head of the Federal Administration of Public Revenues, Carlos Castagneto; the General Director of Customs, Guillermo Michel; and the director of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses, Marco Lavagna, among others.
Battery of measures
In regards to Banco Central, the decision taken is to increase the fixed term rate by 6 percentage points, in order to make placements in pesos more attractive. In this way, the annual interest rate that the 30-day fixed terms would pay would be around 97% for placements of up to $30 million.
In addition, the meeting ratified the decision that the Central Bank will increase intervention in the exchange market and the administration of the “crawling peg”, a term used to denominate the strategy of progressive and controlled devaluation of the currency.
The intervention of the Central will have as its main objective the “stabilization of the exchange rates” and “expand the capacity of intervention in CCL and MEP”, the sources stressed.
The authorities of the Ministry of Economy will also seek accelerate agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)the swap with China and obtaining a credit guarantee through the New Development Bank of the countries that make up the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), for which Minister Massa will travel on May 29 to Beijing to participate in a meeting of the forum that brings together the main emerging powers.
encourage consumption
With regard to consumption, the decisions made go through lower the interest rate of the program Now 12to which will be added the reduction of interest rates for unpaid balances of credit cards.
There will also be measures to increase refunds of purchases made with debit cards by vulnerable sectors.
Regarding the level of activity, the Federal Administration of Public Revenues will implement a new current debt payment plan of up to 84 installments and a tax relief for the moratorium on Badlar-rate installments, in response to a request made essentially by SME entities.
In addition, it will seek to speed up the approval of requests submitted to the Import System of the Argentine Republic (SIRA) for the importation of capital goods, through the mechanism called 360-day SIRA.
A Trade Analysis, Monitoring, Traceability and Promotion of Trade Operations Unit will also be formed, which will have the objective of monitoring the purchase and sale of goods and services in internal and external trade; promoting commercial operations fairly, avoiding dominant positions; verify the traceability of the goods traded and the correct taxation at each stage and guide the consumer based on the variables obtained in the monitoring process. To this will be added the decision to seek an ordering of the price makers and the fiscal situation in the Central Market. With regard to foreign trade, the elimination of tariffs and the generation of dumping and protection regulations are also analyzed to improve the competitiveness of national production.
