Foreign tourists will be able to sell up to US$5,000 in authorized banking entities at the exchange rate that arises from operations in the financial market, within the framework of the new measures implemented by the national government as an incentive for them to settle their foreign currency in the official system. and can be added to international reserves.
The measure -which will be made official by the Board of Directors of the Central Bank in the next few hours- will allow tourists to sell foreign currency in entities authorized to operate in the exchange market with the presentation of the identification documentation used to enter the country, reported the Ministry of Economy.
The price that would be used as a reference would be that of the so-called Bolsa dollar or MEP dollar, which in the early hours of the afternoon marked a value of $325.
The decision was made during the economic cabinet meeting headed by Minister Silvina Batakis for more than two hours at the Palacio de Hacienda.
During the meeting, actions were also decided to improve the conditions of access to the exchange market for the payment of imports of inputs for strategic sectors and thus guarantee the continuity of different production processes.
The measure that the Central Bank will implement will allow the payment of inputs in transit, which were shipped at origin, until June 27, 2022, and have arrived in the country with SIMI (Comprehensive Import Monitoring System) in force until said date.
“We are going to speed up the payments of all the supplies that have already entered the country or are even close to arriving”said an official source after the economic cabinet meeting.
In addition to Batakis, the meeting was attended by the Labor Minister, Claudio Moroni; the Legal and Technical Secretary of the Presidency, Vilma Ibarra; the president of the Central Bank, Miguel Pesce; and the head of the Federal Public Revenue Administration, Mercedes Marcó del Pont.
Also taking part in the meeting were the president of the Banco de la Nación Argentina, Eduardo Hecker; the head of the National Securities Commission, Sebastián Negri; and the chief of staff of the Ministry of Productive Development, Camila Cabral.
Minister Batakis was accompanied at the meeting by the Secretary for Economic Policy, Karina Angeletti; the Secretary of Finance, Eduardo Setti; and the Administrative Legal Secretary, José Ballesteros.
The new scenario for tourists to sell their dollars had been advanced yesterday by the spokeswoman for the Presidency, Gabriela Cerruti, and the Minister of Tourism, Matías Lammens, after the meeting of the national cabinet.
Cerruti explained that the tourist dollar is thought of as a “differentiated exchange rate for foreign tourists” with the objective that the dollars “enter the Central Bank” to strengthen the reserves.
For his part, the Minister of Tourism, Matías Lammens, stressed that “receptive tourism is recovering with great vigor” and said that Argentina “needs the dollars that these tourists bring.”
Minister Batakis’ agenda continued with a new meeting with governors, together with the Chief of Staff, Juan Manzur.
Batakis and Manzur reviewed the economic situation in the provinces of La Pampa, Santa Fe and Formosa together with the governors Sergio Zilioto, Omar Perotti and Gildo Insfrán, respectively.
In this way, the head of the Palacio de Hacienda advances in the round of meetings with governors, which began on Monday with the participation of Axel Kicillof (Buenos Aires); Raúl Jalil (Catamarca); Omar Gutierrez (Neuquen); Gerardo Zamora Santiago del Estero); and Osvaldo Jaldo (Tucuman).
A day later Batakis met with the governors of San Juan, Sergio Uñac; from Entre Ríos, Gustavo Bordet, and from La Rioja, Ricardo Quintela, who expressed their support for the economic guidelines of the national government.
In all the meetings, the governors provided details on the economic situation of each of their districts and the minister made herself available to accompany the different realities in the context of a federal vision on which she has been working.