This Wednesday, the Ministry of Economy will announce a battery of exchange measures with a basic decision that will be the creation of an “agricultural dollar”, focused on the third stage of the “soybean dollar”, whose value should be around $300 to stay in line with inflation.
Between Monday and Tuesday the rounds of meetings with the different sectors will be completed to define the regulatory aspects of the new measures, sources from the Palacio de Hacienda indicated. They will include unification for purchases abroad with credit cards and a scheme that reduces the multiplicity of current exchange rates, such as the price of the dollar paid by those who, for example, want to bring artistic shows to the country.
With the soybean 2 dollar exchange rate reference at $230 that was in force until December 31, 2022, the third version should place the conversion at around $300 to keep up with the evolution of inflation.
In reference to how long the alternative will be valid, for now it is not defined. In principle it would be until May 30 and for the rest of the regional economies it would be more valid, although with some type of differentiation.
The program could be amplified after the favorable wink of the FMI, which accepted this alternative in exchange for avoiding a sharp devaluation of the exchange rate. Although the agency freed the hands of the government to carry out this policy, in exchange it demanded that it not intervene in the market through financial dollars and that it advance in the fiscal adjustment.
The soybean dollar 3 aims to give a signal that there will not be a devaluation of magnitude and that this is the best price for the dollar to sell its production. April and May are precisely the two months with the greatest liquidation of the thick harvest and without that carrot, the drop in production possibly felt more strongly as a result of the drought.
A measure of this type postpones the resolution of the problem, since the pothole will be much deeper in the months of June, July and August, in the middle of the electoral process.
The LCG consultant explained: “We understand that (the soybean dollar) will alter seasonality, but it will not add settled balances (unlike 2022) due to lower quantities available. For this reason, we expect some deepening in the scheme of regulations for imports”.
The scarcity of Dollars add a new chapter every day. This Friday, Argentina will have to pay the IMF US$ 1,259 million, which added to the US$ 2,700 million that it issued on Friday, represents an outflow of US$ 4,000 million in one week.
The disbursement of U$S 5,400 million last week will vanish in less than a month, since on Friday the 14th U$S 648 million must be paid and on 21 U$S 681 million. To this must be added US$ 105 million to other multilateral organizations, with which all the money that entered the Central after the approval of the fourth revision was consumed.
In the midst of this scenario, the monetary authority began April with a sale of US$ 259 million. It should be noted that this exit was influenced by the purchase by YPF of US$ 286 million for the payment of a Negotiable Obligation. During the year, the loss of reserves amounts to US$ 5,783 million, which justifies the readaptation of goals in the agreement with the IMF.
Meanwhile, in the market, the “Blue” dollar fell $3 and closed its price at $392. The MEP dollar fell 0.1% and completed the round at $396.94, while the Cash with Settlement (CCL) rose the same percentage to settle at $406.77.
The official dollar depreciated 0.55% and settled at $217.44, while the wholesaler rose 0.65% to $210.37.
In this way, the gap between the “blue” dollar and the official dollar was 80%, compared to the wholesale one, 87%, and in relation to financial options, it was 82% against the MEP and 87% against the CCL.
For the analyst Gustavo Ber, the alternative dollars continue to test the $400 zone since the announced measures “do not resolve the background of the exchange imbalance”, although he admitted that “they could provide temporary relief to calm tensions” in the short term.