The money laundering generated a currency income to the formal financial system, although the amount of dollars “not declared” remains very high.
The Argentines maintained more than US $210,000 million outside the financial system around 2024. The figure represented 10 agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and eight times the stock of international gross reserves that the Central Bank currently has in its coffers.
The numbers are detached from the report of “Balance of payments, international investment position and external debt” corresponding to the last quarter of last year, published by the INDEC This Thursday. There it was reported that residents in the country have investments in “currency and deposits” by U $ 243,320 millionwhich implied a growth of US $ 693 million compared to the previous quarter, but a setback of US $ 10,606 million compared to the same 2023 period.
According to the Customs Collection and Control Agency (ARCA), the second stage of the bleachwhich began last November and ended on March 7, closed with a stock of deposits in dollars of US $ 31,252 million. By joining this data with those of INDEC It is possible to estimate that there are more than US $ 210,000 million dollars “under the mattress”, a value much lower than that of a year ago.
However, to take dimension of the amount, it is worth noting that The government recently confirmed that it requested a new agreement for US $ 20,000 million from the IMF Staff and that gross reserves suffered a significant drop in recent weeks and were close to drilling US $ 26,000 million.
What other data did the INDEC payment balance report announced?
The aforementioned INDEC report showed that the fourth quarter of 2024 presented a surplus in the current account of US $ 1,029 million, promoted by the balance of goods, highlighting the positive balances with Chile, India and the United States. On the contrary, the balance of services was deficient.
Meanwhile, the Financial account He showed a net income of capitals of US $ 439 million, despite the fact that foreign direct investment showed a capital exit for US $243 million. In parallel, reserve assets increased, the net international investment position decreased with respect to the previous quarter, and gross external debt fell au $ 276,137 million to nominal value.
Source: Ambito
