Thursday, March 28

Argentine foreign trade left some US $ 15,000 million in the Central Bank’s cash in 2021


Despite the fact that last year’s numbers reflect an extraordinary situation, in November the monetary authority registered the first negative balance of trade balance since March 2018. In that period, a cash deficit of US $ 117 million was registered, as a result of exports US $ 5,623 million of exports and purchases of US $ 5,740 million.

Of reaching the US $ 15,000 million surplus forecast by experts from Commerce exterior, 2021 would be the fifth best performance so far this century. In 2009, the balance was $ 16,800 million; in 2002, of US $ 16,600; in 2003, US $ 16,000, and in 2019, US $ 15,900 million.

In this context, Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero stated, in an interview with the agency Telam, that the objective of his administration is to generate exports of $ 100 billion in 2022, a challenging goal if sales are taken into account. They could end in 2021 in the order of US $ 77,000, which would imply an increase of 30%. If the problem of the drought is noticed and that in the coming months the international scenario may change due to the rise in the interest rate in the United States with the consequent drop in the price of raw materials, Foreign Minister Cafiero is going to have to make a great effort to achieve that goal.

“This year was exceptional in terms of the availability of trade dollars. On the one hand, the field settled a record figure of more than US $ 30,000 million in the first 11 months of 2021, helped by the international context ”, says the GMA consultancy in a recent report.

The report says that this context, added to mobility restrictions, which negatively affected foreign tourism for most of the year, “caused US $ 14.4 billion to enter through the commercial channel between January and November.”

For its part, the consulting firm Abeceb stated that thanks to the greater magnitude of the increase in export prices in relation to the increase in import prices, the country registered a gain in terms of trade of US $ 5,670 million in the accumulated in the first 11 months of the year, just under half of the balance actually accumulated ”.

“Towards the end of the year, with a trade balance accumulated in 11 months of US $ 14,320 million, we estimate that 2021 would close with a trade surplus of around US $ 15,000 million,” estimated the consultancy led by economist Dante Sica ..

Abeceb estimates that 2021 closed with exports of around US $ 77,000 million “showing an interannual increase of 40% and reaching extraordinary historical levels, mainly due to the boom in commodity prices, the strong recovery of Manufactured from Industrial Origin (MOI ), driven by Brazil, and the recovery of global growth that drove our external sales ”.

Meanwhile, if the data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC), which compiles the data reported by foreign trade agents to Customs, is analyzed, in November a surplus of US $ 397 million was recorded. These are accrued operations. For the statistical agency, in the first 11 months of 2021, sales abroad were accumulated for US $ 71,320 million and purchases for US $ 56,968 million.



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