An absolutely marginal budget cut in quantitative terms that proves more to be a message to a certain sector of the market than a maneuver that goes in line with solving one of the great structural problems -and historical- of the Argentine Republic: the fiscal deficit.
The liquidation of exports fails to get under way. Despite the record of the first half of the year, the Government calculates that there are still more than 5.5 million tons of grain that must be liquidated, although nobody seems to be willing to do it at this exchange rate.
Although the first semester yielded exports dependent on agriculture for 31,000 million dollars (21 percent more than the same period in 2021), the amounts exported have decreased and this result only occurred due to the good international prices that prevailed. for much of the first part of the year.
Sergio Massa’s great dilemma in these times will be to define what he intends to do with the exchange rate.
The dilemma between devaluing (in a more abrupt way than the BCRA has been doing on a daily basis with its “micro devaluations”), improving the exchange rates for some of the exporting sectors, or trying to generate enough expectations to endure time without the need to make profound changes that further deepen the political and social climate.
The soybean dollar It has been a great failure. Only 4 million dollars have been settled. The producers have already said it: “We are here to produce, not to carry out bureaucratic procedures.”
Today Massa would be evaluating some improvement in the scheme although it seems that it would not be enough to survive the rest of the year.
The week of September 6 (according to official information) the economic delegation headed by the Minister of Economy will leave for the United States in search of good news.
They will spend their days between Washington DC and Houston, among investors and international organizations. Nobody wants to invest or lend money to Argentina for a simple reason: business conditions are not right and we are a country on the way to chronic insolvency.
The truth is that Sergio Massa does not want too much: only a few billion that come from multilateral credit organizations that allow him to dream of the “March 2023” plan.
In each exchange rate crisis or financial fragility, all hopes are lit up in the following March: the liquidation of the thick harvest begins again, the dollars return and the lungs receive some oxygen again.
Everything remains to be seen, including what happens if that March of next year never comes.
Economist, host and columnist on Radio Rivadavia.
Source: Ambito
