In the first two months of the year, exporters settled US$11,715 million in the Single Free Exchange Market (MULC)., US$276 million less than what was declared by INDEC. For its part, importers bought u$s9,705 million, an amount that was lower by US$1,181 million than those declared by the statistical agency. These are accrued operations declared before Customs, although they have not yet been paid. Due to this effect of delay in payments, the Central Bank was able to accumulate some US$1,001 million more than what the INDEC reports say.
in January what was declared by foreign trade operators to Customs left a surplus of only US$297 million, but the BCRA reported one of US$1,101 millionyes The difference is explained by higher settlements of US$572 million and lower payments of US$232 million.
In February, informally based on changes in the estimation of the economic and financial capacity of importing companies, the AFIP caused a significant brake on authorizations for access to foreign currency. After several meetings with businessmen, among them, from the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), the government decided to manage the few dollars to import inputs for production.
In this way, In the second month of the year, the amount of authorized payments for imports was US$4,689 million, a figure of US$947 million lower than that reported by INDEC.
Then in March, the Central Bank announced that it was joining the import authorization process together with the AFIP. The monetary authority decided to divide the operations into categories A and B. The former have free access to dollars as long as the amount is less than the FOB value of their 2021 imports plus 5% or the FOB value of 2020 plus 70%. The second, on the other hand, are those that exceed this margin and therefore, importers are obliged to finance the payment abroad within 160 days. From this it follows that the availability of dollars is going to be higher in the coming months, also taking into account that in the first two months of the year the settlement of the thick harvest had not yet begun, which will provide an extra depending on the increase in international prices of raw materials, caused by the war in Ukraine.
While, According to the Exchange Balance of the Central Bank, in the first two months of this year the surplus of the exchange of goods was reduced by 20% in relation to the same period last year when it reached US$2,496 million, which is in line with analysts’ estimates for 2022.
The consulting firm Abeceb projects a trade balance of around US$12,000 million for 2022, which marks a drop of 18% compared to 2021. The consultant forecasts “exports slightly above those of 2021 and imports growing at a faster rate in response to the needs imposed by the recovery of the economy, although limited by restrictions imposed to meet the goal of accumulation of Net International Reserves agreed with the IMF”.
Source: Ambito
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