Dollar: BCRA regulations blocked the purchase of foreign currency in banks and in the MULC, what will happen on Monday?

This Friday, in the midst of a strong escalation of the parallels and while the soybean dollar 3 is expected to gain momentum, savers and importers they could not buy dollars through the banks and that generated concern in the City because rumors began to spread that linked this restriction to some measure of the Government to explicitly prevent such operations. But the truth is that it was a stoppage caused by technical issues derived from the process of putting into force new restrictions on the purchase of foreign currency.

Let us remember that the Central Bank (BCRA) made various adjustments to the Foreign and Foreign Exchange regulations through Communication “A” 7746 and, among them, provided that, within the advancement of information on the request for foreign currency for importers in the official exchange market (MULC) that financial entities must carry out, information is included on whether the provider is a related counterparty or not.

Official sources revealed to Ambit that what is sought is to incorporate “necessary information to prevent fraudulent operations and to be able to count on the cooperation of the countries that are trading partners.” Also, from now on, Banks have to report exchange operations greater than US$10,000 two business days in advance to the monetary regulator.which will also slow down the whole process.

Until now, only the importer’s CUIT, amount and operation code (which identifies the reason for the operation) were required, therefore, as explained Gustavo Quintanafrom PR Exchange Operators to Ambit“in view of these new requirements, the banks had to begin to adapt the systems of control to the new norms”.

An adaptation process for banks

Consequently, a source in the banking sector reported that, “in order to adapt the systems, The purchase or sale of dollars, titles, etc., was down in many entities, since you cannot make changes to the system when it is running”.

And, since the circular in question was issued on Thursday night, they pointed out that Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the relevant areas will be adapting all the systems in order to put them back into operation. Thus, they rule out that it is a request from the Government so that the entities do not sell dollars. “It is about adapting the operation to the regulations that tighten the stocks of imports more,” they describe.

In the Government they explain that the operation will be resumed as soon as possible, “according to the speed with which banks can adapt their systems so that clients access the market”. Therefore, now, the question is what will happen in the next few days.

Will there be exchange operations on Monday in banks?

“Hopefully they will work on Monday”, they want in a bank. But they recognize that it is quite possible that this will not happen. “Maybe yes, maybe not. These adaptations take time”, they explain. But it is already being said in the City that, between Monday and Tuesday, there will be very little access to the market exchange rate, so it is expected that in those two days there will be little demand, surely.

Meanwhile, everything that they have not been able to operate this Friday accumulates for the next business day, so this situation does not reverse the payments. And the same applies to operations carried out on Monday, in case the difficulty persists. “At most it takes one or two days and everything accumulates for the third,” explains a source. And they clarify that this is not the first time it has happened. It has already happened many times in which the systems had to be adapted previously.

The truth is that, as Quintana explains, this Friday, the changes to the operations with currencies generated a favorable scenario for the official objectives of accumulation of dollars, since, “in a context of non-existent demand for foreign currency, the monetary authority was able to win the second most important amount of purchases of the current month.” Thus, the accumulated figure for April reversed the negative result shown until this Thursday and It now happened to be positive in about US$81 million.