The restrictions for the CCL dollar and the MEP already apply: all the details

The National Securities Commission (CNV) formalized the modification to the purchase and sale mechanism of denominated sovereign bonds and payable in dollars, through which MEP and CCL dollars are accessed, and the 15-day limitation on the sale of the obtained currencies, to avoid arbitration with other dollarized assets, through the published general resolution 962/23 today in the Official bulletin.

The detail of the CNV measure

It established that if a person or company bought the MEP dollar, they will be able to send the purchased currencies to their bank account, as currently in force, only that they will have a 15-day restriction to sell those dollars against dollarized assets.

In this regard, it stated that “Orders may be placed to arrange operations with settlement in foreign currency or to transfer negotiable securities from or to abroad, only if during the previous 15 calendar days, the client did not carry out sales operations of fixed income negotiable securities. nominated and payable in dollars issued by Argentina under local or foreign law, with settlement in foreign currency, in the segment of concurrence of offers with price-time priority and, likewise, that there is a reliable statement of not doing so in the subsequent 15 calendar days” .

The RG also determined “some prudential limitations for those customers who make sales of these same titles with settlement in foreign currency.”

In this sense, he remarked that RG 959/2023 of the same body “requires certain specific regulations for the agreement and liquidation of operations by each of the sub-accounts reached by the concept of own portfolio of agents, and that have the character of qualified investors.

For his part, the president of the CNV, Sebastián Negri, affirmed that “RG 962 does not change anything the normal operation of 99% of those who do MEP and CCL”, and pointed out that “what it does, like its antecedent, RG 907, is to avoid arbitration due to price differences between public securities and other instruments, as has been warned in recent days, distorting the market”.

In this sense, the measure seeks to avoid the so-called “curlers”, an arbitration mechanism through which an asset is bought for a low price and sold for a more expensive one, making an immediate difference.

Last week, the Ministry of Economy announced that the Central Bank would stop intervening in the sovereign bond market, in order to reduce the price gap between the MEP dollar and the CCL, which had fueled arbitration operations or “curls” in recent weeks.

What are the reasons given for the measure?

In the document, it is made explicit that the Central Bank asked the CNV to implement measures to prevent the avoidance operations detected. They also point out that the aforementioned regulations, the CNV highlighted their extraordinary and transitory nature, until supervening events make its revision advisable and/or the causes that determined its adoption disappear.

It “establishes the need to adopt measures tending to consolidate and strengthen the macroeconomic order, as well as to implement policies that make it possible to provide greater exchange and financial certainty in the short and medium term; with the objective of achieving a greater availability of instruments to stabilize markets, absorbing possible monetary surpluses and, in particular, rearranging financial assets, especially those denominated in foreign currency, within the National Public Sector, with a view to a more prudent and efficient management of the same”.

“That, in the current prevailing economic context and within the framework of the recent evolution of the exchange market, it becomes necessary to reduce the volatility of financial variables and contain the impact of fluctuations in financial flows on the normal functioning of the economy as well as the impact of the operations implemented in the capital market through the simultaneous purchase and sale of negotiable securities,” they added.