This Wednesday the first debt tender in pesos of the new government will be carried out. The Central lowered the repo rate and rejected offers for $5 billion from banks for Leliqs.
The Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo will face a trial by fire this Wednesday before the market. That day, the head of the Treasury Palace may test if it is possible to disarm the so-called “Leliqs bomb” which worries President Javier Milei so much, transferring the liabilities of the Central Bank to the National Treasury, as he already did when he was head of Finance during the presidency of Mauricio Macri.
In reality, more than Leliqs we should talk about paid liabilities because the banks have been leaving them aside in recent days. Given the doubts they had about Milei’s statements in which he assured that it was urgent to disarm them in order to free the exchange rate, in the first week of the new government the Banks changed the Leliqs that expire every 28 days, for passes that are renewed every 24 hours.
But cOnce Caputo’s first economic measures were known, that focus on a fiscal adjustment of 5 points of GDP and the discrete jump of the official dollar to $800, without any announcements for the Leliqs, the banks tried to return. On the other hand, on Friday, the president of the Central Bank, Santiago Bausili, reduced the repo rate from 126% to 100%, The banks wanted to position themselves in Leliqs that pay 133% and in the last tender, Bausili only accepted $1 billion and rejected $5 billion.
It is not clear whether the movement was a product of the disorder and uncertainty generated by the arrival of Freedom Advances to power or if it was a masterpiece of deception: scaring banks into abandoning interest-bearing liabilities and then offering them alternatives. What is the alternative? Treasury Bonds in pesos.
The market expects to know this Monday the conditions of the first debt tender by the Secretary of Finance, Pablo Quirno. On Thursday night in a statement the Treasury Palace announced that among other financial instruments, Letters maturing in 30 days will be made available. It is speculated that they could be fixed rate bills (LEDES) with monthly rates of around 15%. The manager of a stockbroking company consulted by Ámbito considered that “There are many weights that were left loose” after last week.
The December maturities, according to data from the Congressional Budget Office (CPO), amount to about $200 billion and the majority would be intrastate. It is also assumed that the Central Bank will stop acting in secondary markets to support “the peso curve”, so Any participation in Wednesday’s round should be genuine, without the help of helping hands.
There is a problem with what can happen from Wednesday. Financial analyst Christian Buteler has been raising it in recent days. “Remunerated liabilities are a tool of monetary contraction, the bonds placed by the government are not. If you go from remunerated liabilities to bonds or Treasury bills, it is a monetary expansion in a context of inflationary acceleration,” says the economist.
Source: Ambito
