Financial dollars: will they be able to control them with the latest BCRA rate hikes?

Thus, in the words of the economist and director of MyR Asociados, Fabio Rodríguez “it is a measure whose trigger must be found in the problems that the economy has to lower financial dollars, the blue and the exchange rate gap”.

Rate hike: the reasons for the BCRA

For Rodríguez, what is happening is that the repurchase of bonds announced by the Government, until now, has not had the expected results and the exchange rate pressure. So, the Government implements a measure that what it does is “push a general rise in interest rates, which will drag the banks or the treasury to raise rates, and also shortens the liquidity horizon.” Thus, in short, what is tried is to contain liquidity so that you do not put pressure on the financiers.

However, Rodríguez warns that these policies have high costs because the balance of the BCRA worsens, that of the banks (funding costs rise and margin decreases) and that of the Treasury, which will have to pay more and compete with the BCRA for the liquidity of the FCIs.

Will the BCRA be able to control the exchange rate gap?

However, if the government succeeds in its goal of controlling the gap, it could claim that it did so for the greater good. You’ll make it? From the Bullmarket Brokers Research team they consider that it is possible that it is. “With the measure that I take of rate increases, the dollar would have to stay at these current prices, since the repos are arbitrated with the surety and this will make it more expensive to take money and it will be convenient to place that money,” they maintain. Thus, they consider that this will remove incentives from the dollar as he seeks BCRA.

For his part, Mateo Reschini, Senior Analyst at the consulting firm Inviu, points out that, although it was noted a calm on the first day After the measure of the financiers, “it takes some time for there to be an impact on the performance of mutual funds.” Therefore, it indicates that, perhaps, for the moment, the answer is quite moderate.

Thus, he anticipates that, although they are quite calm for the moment, the financial dollarsin the coming days or weeks, we can really begin to see a more forceful effect of this rate adjustment that the BCRA applied to keep the financiers at bay.

Meanwhile, Martínez Gerber is more conservative in his optimism and points out that, “to the extent that the Government does not get foreign currency to clear the external front and supply the demand for imports, there will continue to be pressure on financial dollars”, no matter how much this type of measure is applied.

In the same sense, points out the Eco Go economist, Juan Delich, who points out that “these measures and others that they took these weeks They do not seem to have the expected success” for now.

However, the economist Federico Glustein does not discount that the desired effect of appease the financiers by the increase in rates, but warns that this “will depend on how much the market validates them.”

In this sense, note that the initial reaction to these ads that do not agree with the intention of the economic management, however, he maintains that it is possible that in the coming days we will see a stable reaction to these measures. Everything will depend on how agents read the context.