© Archyde.com/AGUSTIN MARCARIAN
Facade of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange
BUENOS AIRES, March 7 (Archyde.com) – Argentina’s bonds fell again on Monday due to persistent disarming of positions in the face of a marked global risk aversion due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at a time when the local Congress will begin to debate an agreement to restructure debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The Argentine Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, will present this afternoon (1700 GMT) in the Chamber of Deputies the guidelines of the understanding with the IMF to restructure some 45,000 million dollars, whose approval is not guaranteed because the ruling party needs the support of the opposition .
“There is a certain care in traditional investors in what has traditionally been Argentina’s compliance with certain fiscal goals,” said Antonio Aracre, an analyst at Syngenta.
He added that “investors in general are pessimistic by nature in the face of these things and will first want to see that the goals can be met and from then on see how much the bonds recover and therefore how much the country risk can be reduced.”
The new agreement, which has yet to be approved by Congress and by the international credit institution, establishes that the payment period for each disbursement is 10 years, with a grace period of four and a half years, so that the country it will start paying off the debt in 2026 and end in 2034.
For its part, the conflict in Ukraine triggered a rise in international oil prices, which reached their highest level since early 2008, fueling fears of higher inflation and lower global economic growth.
* The Argentine country risk, prepared by the JP. Morgan bank, rose 47 basis points to 1,974 units, at 12:40 local time (1540 GMT), after scoring a historical maximum level of 1,991 units in the morning.
* The index of the South American country restarted on September 10, 2020 in the area of 1,083 points after a millionaire restructuring of sovereign debt held by private creditors.
* “Probably, the country risk will be one of the last things to react,” Aracre estimated.
* Within this framework, bonds in the local over-the-counter market fell by an average of 0.6%, where the benchmark Bonar 2030 bond lost 0.75%.
* “The outflow of capital from the funds of emerging countries impacted on the Argentine debt, and nullified the positive effect of the agreement with the IMF staff, at least for now,” estimated the StoneX brokerage, adding that in “the domestic market , the Merval seems to surf the wave better than stocks from developed countries.”
* The leading stock index S&P Merval operated with an improvement of 0.56%, to 90,019.56 points, where energy stocks stood out. Pampa Energía, one of the main energy companies in Argentina, said that it projects a 60% increase in gas production to reach a daily record of 11.4 million cubic meters in the southern winter.
* In the exchange market, the interbank peso lost 0.29%, to 108.44/108.45 per dollar, in a market regulated by the central bank (BCRA), an entity that last week accumulated purchases in the market for about $90 million, traders said.
* “The details of the agreement with the IMF plus the BCRA measures implementing the so-called “SIMI” (comprehensive import monitoring system), make it clear that the last alternative for the Government is an exchange rate jump, regardless of whether they have to adjust plus the stocks to the importers”, affirmed Roberto Geretto, of Fundcorp.
* The peso in the informal exchange rate recovered 0.25%, to 200.50 per dollar, and in the alternative segments it was trading at 205 in the “counted with liquidation” stock market (CCL) and at 197 per dollar in the sued “dollar MEP”.
(Reporting by Walter Bianchi; With the collaboration of Hernán Nessi; Editing by Nicolás Misculin)