“We estimate that the surplus was reduced to 350 million dollarsaffected by the drop in agricultural exports as a consequence of the droughtalthough sustained by the continuous drop in imports“, he claimed Isaiah MariniEconomist at Econviews.
Argentina is the world’s leading exporter of soybean oil and mealfaces a significant drought that has been affecting the crops of local producers for months now.
The great disparity between estimates of analysts ranged from maximum deficit of 327 million dollars and a maximum positive balance of 1,300 million dollars for the ICA of the first month of 2023.
According to official data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC), the country reached in 2022 a trade surplus of 6,923 million dollars, compared to the 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 rainand the government does not have much room to tighten imports without further cooling the economy,” Marini added.
And he remarked that “however, with a central bank without reserves, we believe that the government will end up adjusting the stocks (exchange) even more and implementing temporary exchange schemes such as the soybean dollar”.
Argentina implemented in September and December 2022 a increase in their foreign exchange earnings offering a differentiated exchange rate to encourage the liquidation of soybean producers, known as the soybean dollar, which translated into an increase in liquidation by exporters.
The INDEC, according to its publication calendar, will release the official data on the trade balance for January next Wednesday afternoon.
The outlook for the coming months is not encouraging either: so far, the most conservative estimates indicate that the soybean and corn harvests could be the lowest in 15 years and, associated with this, the foreign exchange income of the field would be reduced by US$10,000 million.
Source: Ambito
