On the other hand, it indicates that the current account deficit would not represent a problem for a country with greater external financing or many accumulated reserves, but “This is not the case of Argentina 2025“. Then the full interview with the chief of macroeconomics of the financial entity.
Journalist: What happens to the dollar that is going up? Can yellow alerts distinguish or while the exchange rate holds within the band there are no significant warnings?
Matias Rajnerman: In the last two weeks, the exchange rate rose 6% and marked a nominal maximum. The average of the region’s currencies were appreciated against the dollar in the period, so the causes must be sought in the local economy. In addition, it is worth noting that the liquidation of the agriculture of the last week was the largest since 2022 (US $ 360 million per day, twice the average of June, for example), so there was no supply problem: the demand grew.
The question is whether it was private or national treasure, which in the last week of June bought US $ 200 million – confirmed by Caputo by Twitter – and that in the last one would have bought US $ 100 million more, as deduced from the data published by the Central Bank. If this were the case, there is no sudden change of expectations, and the dollar rise would have a counterpart in the reservations rise. Therefore, it would not be a problem.
Now, if the rise would be explained to a greater extent because the private ones accelerated their change of pesos for dollars, the yellow lights would be more intense.
Q.: What appreciation does you have regarding the tools acquired by the Government (Bonte, purchase of dollars per blocks) to accumulate reservations?
MR: The tools are not bad, but for now they have a volume problem: they are very limited. To dimension, the Government bought $ 200 million in the market -ou $ s million, as stated above- and placed US $ 1,500 million. In contrast, only next Wednesday, July 9, $ 4,300 million capital and interest of public titles in dollars expire. Thus, the problem is the speed: up to here, the dollars of the public sector enter slowly and go quickly -in addition to them late: after the high season of departure from the harvest.
Every economic policy has its unwanted counterpart: if there was a assured path and without development setbacks, all countries in the world would adopt it. In the case of the purchase of dollars per blocks, the countercara is the increase in currency demand that, if the supply does not increase, implies a rise in its price and in the case of the Bonte an increase in the debt in local currency. Anyway, since the accumulation of reserves is a priority against some depreciation of the weight and the debt stock in local currency, it is not bad news.
Q.: Do you agree with the argument that the government wields when defending the current account deficit? (The dollars leave the private ones and we do not intervene in the Mulc, there is no exchange tension in view).
MR: Argentina has a demand for demanding debt payments for 2026 and 2027, US $ 15,000 million per year: three out of four dollars of the current reservations explore in the next two years. It is true that the amounts are not much greater than the average of the region, but there is a very important difference: they have financing, for now we do not.
In a scenario without external credit, Argentina has to look for dollars to enter, not discuss whether “it is healthy” that they come out. And there the current account deficit becomes a problem. International experience shows that the more reservations a country has -in comparison with its production -, the easier they lend. And here is the second problem: Argentina is a country with many debt maturities for its level of reserves that also stopped accumulating dollars on the real side, that is, by the balance of goods and services.
In conclusion, the temporary current account deficit – and limited – is not a problem for a country with more external financing than payments or many accumulated reserves. This is not the case of Argentina 2025.
Q.: Is Argentina a high or low exchange country?
MR: In 2023, The parallel dollar averaged 2,650 pesos todaywith peaks of more than 3,000 pesos at some point, surpassing the average of 2002 (current 2,500 pesos), the exchange rate of the convertibility output. Having this recent experience, it was logical for the Argentine currency to be appreciated, also considering the turn in fiscal policy with its reduction in the issuance needs.
Now, in macro terms, so that a country can appreciate its currency they have to enter more dollars than they come out -or have enough reservations to cover the imbalance -and here is the problem. If Argentina did not have debt maturities in the coming months and years, or had external financing, such as in 2016 and 2017 or April 2025 with the expansion of the IMF credit, the exchange rate could sustain these values in the medium term. The issue, again, is that this is not the stage, and high or bass become relative.
If the demand for dollars to import, save and pay the debt grows faster than the supply for traditional and energy exports plus what may come from external credit, instead of high or low, the exchange rate becomes difficult to sustain. The micro, productive scenario is different, but that does not seem to be a concern of the government, nor of the IMF.
Q.: How could the economic situation of the province of Buenos Aires qualify?
MR: The economy is experiencing an important sector reconfiguration process. Although at the aggregate level a growth is verified compared to 2023 (the April data was 3.5% above the average of that year and quite close to the maximum of June 2022), the disaggregated dynamics is very heterogeneous: while the agriculture and mines and quarries – where oil is 15%, the industry, the construction and trade fall 8% on average.
In regional terms, this has an impact: oil or mining exploitation are not in the same places where industrial production or public and private construction falls. In this sense, the province of Buenos Aires is beaten: it has an overrepresentation of industry, construction and commerce in relation to the rest of the country and a low incidence of oil and mining (not zero because YPF has a refinery in Ensenada, for example). In the case of agriculture is in line with the national average.
As a result, while the INDEC (EMAE) activity estimator is 3.5% above 2023, the activity estimator of the province of Buenos Aires (Emapba) is almost 2% below. In other words, while the nation already recovered the fall of 2024, the province still did not. Sector reconfiguration is not harmless in geographical terms.
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Q.: Do you consider a real risk of loss of productivity and employment regarding the opening of imports in the province?
MR: The blows to the industry feel more than proportional in the province, due to the greatest weight that manufacturing production has. In the first four -month period of 2025, the economy grew 6.6% compared to the same period of 2024, while imports jumped 35%: more than five times what the activity grew. Historically, this relationship was 3 to 1: for each point that the activity grew, the imports grew 3 points. At present, that difference almost doubled. This dynamic, in addition to having a negative effect on employment, becomes very demanding in dollars to growth, sowing some doubts regarding its sustainability.
Among other things, this evolution responds to one of the main growth drivers, exchange appreciation, combined with the flexibility of some import tariffs. It does not necessarily seem bad to think about a gradual opening process of the Argentine economy, the problem is to do it unilaterally and accelerated, without changes in tax policy – Argentina’s tax pressure is much greater than the regional average, only comparable to Brazil – in a global context where the world is increasingly closed.
For example, many countries have export incentive systems -drawbacks, a kind of inverse withholdings-, which allow to accelerate productivity gains. Without this type of incentive scheme and commercial insertion programs, economic opening is advised against most of economic literature.
Q.: The fixed term maintains a gain that beats inflation? Why?
MR: The fixed deadline pays around 2.7% monthly, a rate where it is located from before leaving the stocks. The floor of the interest rate is greater in a scheme without exchange controls than in another with, due to the restrictions that the demand for dollars does not have: with stocks, the chances of buying currencies, especially for companies, are lower and therefore the rate margins relax.
Until now, the fixed term beat inflation and mainly to the exchange rate, so one of the main incentives to demand dollars – his performance – was limited. The problem is that this was altered in the last two weeks: the dollar rose more than 5% since June 23, and accumulated two months of fixed term in 14 days. In this sense, there is a certain development between LECAPS rates, which are around 2.5% and those of fixed deadlines, which are around 2.7%: the best liquidity conditions that the first have (they can be sold in the secondary, the fixed term cannot be disarmed until its maturity) are giving investors a plus in times of tension.
Source: Ambito
