Argentines tend to take more and more of their money out of the country. How many dollars do you have abroad today? Why do they do it? Is there a solution for this problem?
The external debt currently reaches US$276,694 million and, paradoxically, could almost be canceled in its entirety by the billions of dollars that Argentines have abroad. And it is that, according to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC)local savers and investors had, as of December 31 of last year, US$261,795 million outside the country, of which US$246,946 million are in currency (bills outside the financial system) and deposits.
Comparing these numbers with those of the previous quarter (the third of 2022), the totalal increased by US$301 million in those three months, since it reached, at that time, US$261,494 million, and the currency and deposits component increased by US$73 million, from US$246,874 million.
Likewise, to these numbers we must add the portfolio investments, which are financial assets and accumulate US$73,550 million in total (another item that increased, in this case, by US$488 million in the quarter). And this responds to the fact that it is increasingly common for Argentines to have investment accounts in other countries, a trend that was accentuated by the pandemic because people digitized much more quickly.
Dollars abroad, economic instability is the great engine
And these numbers confirm that Argentines tend to take their money out of the country more and more, due to the economic instabilityOn the one hand, but also for work reasons (many provide services to companies abroad), greater security or to escape local investment risk. In addition, this trend has gained even more strength in recent years as a result of the restrictions that apply to the purchase of dollars in the local market.
This is confirmed, in dialogue with Ámbito, by the economist Amilcar Collante when he assures that “the numbers of foreign assets of Argentines reflect the distrust in the currency and partly to the financial system”. According to his vision, it is the counterpart of a period of permanent crisis with currency and bank runs, stocks and corralitos, among other traumatic episodes.
In addition, inflation has made Argentines lack confidence in their currency and seek alternative pathways coverage against the constant devaluation of the peso. Therefore, according to Collante, the only way to reverse this situation is by fighting inflation, which would surely be a good first step towards a recovery of the value (nominal, of course, but also symbolic) of the currency. national.
How to build weight confidence
And, in this sense, Collante maintains that, “for people to start thinking about investing and save in local currencyit is necessary to have an inflation similar to what other neighboring countries currently have, in which it is below 9% or 10% per year.
This sounds very distant or almost impossible in an Argentina in which the data of February inflation, according to INDEC data was 6.6% and some private projections already anticipate an index higher than that for March. Thus, the annual forecast of a large part of the analysts is that the index will be around 100% per year, or higher than that percentage.
Source: Ambito
