According to private estimates, US$100 million was seized between Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week. But that figure would rise to US$223 million if the first three days of this week are also taken into account.
He The government began to intervene in the dollar stock market last week in order to reduce the exchange rate gap. Thus, it announced that it would sterilize around $2.5 billion in the coming weeks and that for this it would use the foreign currency it bought in the exchange market since May. According to private estimates, $100 million was reportedly seized between Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. But that figure would rise to $223 million if the first three days of this week are also considered.
Regarding the sales of the Central Bank (BCRA) in the MEP and CCL, it is worth highlighting that The Central Bank does not report the content of the intervention on a daily basis. In this regard, from the consultant 1816reported that “now the normal cash term is T+1 and, in that term, we see that since Monday, July 15, an average of US$57 million was negotiated daily, which compares with around US$20 million in the past months. Based on this, We can infer that sales are for significant amounts.”
For its part, from PPIthey added that given the contraction of $133.939 million of the Monetary Base, which was announced on Friday, we can assume that there would have been an intervention with US$100 million between Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last weekIn this regard, they used for the analysis the “others” section of the Monetary Base that reflects open market operations, put exercises by financial entities and dollar futures when the BCRA has a position.
In turn, from Outlierreported that the BCRA sold US$1 million on Wednesday in the official dollar market, with US$283 million traded against wholesale currency between the three terms in the MLC. “The cumulative result of the foreign exchange intervention so far in July is therefore US$223 million”they bet and added that in general terms is in line with historical averages, but well below the dynamics of this 2024 until May.
Are there dollars to intervene? How much firepower does the BCRA have?
“The fact that net reserves are estimated at US$6.461 billion in the negative implies that The Central Bank has a solvency problem, but not necessarily a liquidity problem. Rather, the estimated liquidity in bonds and other assets in hard currency is US$10.212 billion. The Central Bank confirmed its intention to sterilize $2.4 billion or the equivalent of US$1.8 billion, so would have sufficient liquidity to intervene in the financial market“, explained PPI.
However, they argued that with the rest of the components of the BCRA balance sheet, The net reserves or net worth in dollars of the monetary authority would deteriorate to -US$8,261 million.
In turn, Outilier contributed that This week, the official data for the end of June on net reserves were released, according to the IMF methodologybeing Negatives of just under US$2.5 billionMeanwhile, if the Government’s dollar deposits were not subtracted, the deficit was reduced to just over US$1.4 billion. “To reach positive numbers it was necessary not to consider (not to subtract) the maturities of the BOPREAL Series 2 of the next 12 months”they expanded.
Regarding July, with data as of the 9th of this month, it can be estimated that after the payments of services from the Bonares and Globales, and the payments to the IMF, Net International Reserves (NIR) fell by almost US$3.5 billion compared to the end of June. “The sharp decline in RINs during the month of July is not unexpectedgiven the dynamics of the BCRA intervention since the end of May and the payments scheduled for that month,” added this consultancy.
“This once again highlights how difficult and costly it is to accumulate reserves with strict exchange controls, and that the Government will have to relax its stance. (which has not been explicit for some time now) regarding not going out until there are positive RINs. Otherwise, Unification could take too long. In this regard, we always remember that in December 2015 we came out with negative reserves and that these remained in that area during the first months after unification (until May-June)”, concluded Outlier.
Source: Ambito
