Private deposits in dollars (argendollars) showed a slight recovery last month, but at last implied an increase of 43 million dollars. Thus, the stock of argendollars closed February at 16,339 million dollars, marking an average monthly balance of 16,374 million dollars (increased by 115 million compared to last January) and chaining the sixth month of growth.
At times when there is precisely no currency slack, the behavior of argendollar holders is positive. In this regard, it is worth remembering that these placements are the raw material for local financing in foreign currency, mainly, destined to satisfy the demand of exporters and companies related to future shipments. This is financing, practically, absent at the international level except for top-tier companies or with operations and presence on several continents.
It should be remembered that during the crisis unleashed in the middle of last year when the ownership of the Palacio de Hacienda was replaced, there was an outflow of almost 1,000 million argendollars, of which 88% left in July in the midst of the outflow of Martín Guzmán and the rest in August with the Batakis-Massa succession. Luckily, in the last two months of last year they began to return, some thanks to the Soybean Dollar, and thus between November and December they experienced an increase of 1,310 million dollars, of which 72% occurred in the last month of the year. year, mainly for tax reasons. Last January, barely 22 million dollars left, which has already been more than recovered in February. Therefore, the current stock of argendollars is very similar to that of July-August of last year.
loan stock
On the other hand, the monthly average balance of loans to the private sector in foreign currency was 3,589 million dollars, thus registering an increase of 84 million compared to the previous month. Thus, the stock of private loans in dollars closed last February at 3,367 million dollars. The differential between the stock of deposits and loans is not only related to the regulatory requirements for access to this type of financing (they must be exporting companies, or that provide inputs for an exportable final good) but also for precautionary reasons.
The experience of 2001/2002 made a deep impression on the financial system, and on savers, for which reason liquidity is privileged and this is reflected in the Central Bank (BCRA) statistics. In this sense, the BCRA indicates in its latest Monetary Report that the liquidity of financial entities in the foreign currency segment experienced an increase of 0.2 percentage points with respect to the January average, reaching 86% of deposits and maintaining at historically high levels.
The increase was explained by current accounts in foreign currency at the BCRA, and was partially offset by cash in banks. Regarding the composition of liquidity in foreign currency, 66.4% corresponds to deposits in the BCRA and 19.6% to physical bills in banks.
Source: Ambito
