With less than five days until the presidential elections, the Government will seek by all means to relieve the pressure on parallel dollars. During the weekend, the Minister of Economy Sergio Massa met with part of his team to coordinate the actions. From the Treasury Palace they anticipated Ambit A week full of operations is coming in the caves of the City of Porteña. A reinforcement for reserves, the strategy for financiers and the siege of the blue while Commerce monitors the most sensitive variable: prices.
“Final Four”This is how a member of the economic team who usually chooses football metaphors to describe the challenges of management defined the wheels that remain until this Sunday’s vote. The days of tense calm on Wednesday and Thursday, plus the holidays on Friday and Monday were water in the desert. Although none of this prevents the tension from resuming from this Tuesday.
Despite the initiatives that aim to encourage the liquidation of soybeans, minerals, products from regional economies and SMEs, so far this month, The Central Bank sold more than US$600 million in the official market. “Everything is stopped. It always happens in the pre-electoral scenario, but now that a candidate says that the peso is worthless, it is much worse,” summarized an important reference in the agroindustrial sector.
This currency drain does not include the dollars that the monetary entity used to intervene in the implicit quotes of financiers. Consultants and economists agree that considering this route the figure would be much higher, although there is divergence in the magnitude of the phenomenon. The Government hopes that Sunday’s result will help reset expectations and bring some normality to the exchange market, until: resistance.
Before the electoral performance of each candidate is known, This Wednesday from Beijing, President Alberto Fernández will announce the launch of the second tranche of the swap with China. This will allow the Central Bank to have an additional US$5,000 million for imports and to convert and intervene in the financial market whose operations were limited by the latest regulations established by the National Securities Commission for large foreign investors.
And the blue dollar?
In media terms the Dolar blue He is the one who sets the agenda. Every time it is triggered it sets off alarms for importers and merchants who unleash a new wave of preventive re-markings. It is an illegal market in which the Government cannot intervene. At least not directly. Although it has alternative options, such as the deployment of AFIP and Customs agents that was seen in recent days in the City of Buenos Aires and that pierced the floor of $1,000 in the parallel currency.
A high source from the Treasury Palace told this medium that During this week “more raids and operations are coming”. Perhaps that is why it did not attract attention that Massa called a meeting on Sunday Mother’s Day with officials from the AFIP and Customs. These actions not only seek to dismantle specific operations, but also generate “risk perception” about behaviors that they consider “speculative.”
In any case, the pressure on the “cueveros” will continue. The Government considers irrational the gap between the informal dollar and the financial ones, which remained around 20% for several days. They let it be known that they could even move forward with new arrest requests. A fence that will tighten every time exchange rate pressure increases.
The price struggle
In all this, no one forgets the most sensitive variable in bullfights: prices. The Secretary of Commerce categorically denied to this media the versions that indicate that the main brand of soft drinks will increase its prices by 35% after the elections: “Totally false,” they said. The multinational company also clarified that a message of that type was never sent.
Along these lines, Matías Tombolini’s office assures that at the moment they have not found any increases outside the usual. Although the head of the AFIP already warned on Radio 10 that Those who do not comply with the increase guidelines agreed with the Economy will have their tax benefits taken away granted after the August devaluation.
The statement sent to its customers by a coffee importer is therefore a warning sign. “Given the impossibility of accessing the official dollar, we are forced to market against transfer payment in dollars that you can obtain in the MEP,” says the text that circulated on WhatsApp since the end of last week. Prices are another side of the coin that Massa will not be able to neglect to remain competitive on the road to the Casa Rosada.
Source: Ambito
