Official measures on the exchange and sale of bonds in foreign currency by public entities managed to appease the exchange rate gap last week. Analysts point out that the pax may be sustained in the coming days. Doubts for the medium term.
The financial dollars had a sharp fall in the last week, after the Ministry of Economy announced a package of measures aimed at containing the exchange rate gap. In the midst of a complex context due to the lack of dollars due to the drought, the Government ordered, through a decree, public organizations to exchange their dollar bonds under foreign law for instruments in pesos issued by the Treasury. In addition, public entities must sell bonds in dollars under local legislation to private companies, to give liquidity to financial dollars. To this, added flexibility for MEP and CCL operations through a regulation of the National Securities Commission. Now, the market is evaluating how the parallel prices could move in the coming days.
In that framework, financial dollars fell during the last week. The MEP dollar fell $13 (3.4%), from $388.84 to $375.72. The same dynamic followed the CCL dollar, which fell $13 (3.3%) from $403.57 to $390.19 in the same period.
Thus, initially, the impact on prices was positive. Analysts consulted by Ámbito indicate that the measure will probably maintain some calm in the fluctuations of the exchange rate gap in the short term, although they raise doubts for the medium term. It is that they maintain that the initiative does not solve the main problem, which is the lack of dollars.
Financial analyst Salvador Vitelli pointed out: “Financial prices could remain stable at these values with the current measures. Logically, the government is going to attack the gap and it is likely that it will go out and sell bonds in pesos. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that in order to lower financial dollars, it is not only necessary to attack the peso bond, but also the dollar bonds. It is probable that if they go out to sell these bonds against pesos, they will end up affecting the parity of the bonds in dollars if a buyer does not appear, then the operation can destroy the parities of the bonds in dollars without having touched the financial prices too much. For the financiers to go in the desired direction, the government will have to generate demand for the dollar bonds, so they will probably have to buy them themselves. At the end of the day, they will have to part with reserves.”
Andrés Reschini, analyst at F2 Soluciones Financieras, highlighted that “we may see a bit of calm in the coming days; in fact, it has already been happening.” “However, I am not optimistic about these measures beyond softening the rise in the very short term, because to face the shortage of foreign currency, foreign currency is needed and the bonds, even if they are hard dollars, are not dollars. So if they offer more bonds in the market, the parities will fall, but this will not generate a supply of dollars. So this goes against the investors who trusted Argentina,” he added.
Along these lines, Vitelli considered that “this week they can maintain some stability.” But he added: “Given the destruction of the parities due to the interventions, new requests from the Treasury for monetary assistance to the Central Bank to cover the deficit, a Central Bank that intervenes in the secondary bond market in pesos and now it is going to have to go out to sell bonds to finance the deficit, the market will probably get a little nervous with the deficit levels that we are going to be managing, so the gap will jump even more. Likewise, even though they achieve some containment with the measures, they do not solve the central problem, which is the lack of dollars. In short, the measures can guarantee exchange rate calm in the short term, but I doubt that the gap can be reduced to a significant level”.
Source: Ambito
