Thursday, March 28

Reserves fell again and drilled the US $ 39,000 million for the first time in 13 months


In the first eight days of January, the BCRA managed to accumulate a positive balance of US$200 million through its intervention in the wholesale foreign exchange market. However, reserves fell by more than US$300 million in that period, mainly due to debt payments.

This scenario got worse in the last three days since the entity led by Miguel Pesce had to sell US$140 million to make up for the decline in foreign exchange earnings from the wheat harvest, in a context of high levels of imports.

“In a scenario that replicates the end of last year, the level of imports is maintained and the income of the agro-export sector falls a little, forcing renewed official sales to meet the demand for foreign currency. The balance for January remains positive until today shortly more than US$60 million, a record that could worsen in the next week,” warned the operator Gustavo Quintana.

In this context, net reserves, which are those that do not have a counterparty liability (that is, they exclude contributions from international organizations, swaps with China, etc.), are around US$2,000 million. The figure is worrying, taking into account that in March maturities with the IMF alone were close to US$3,000 million (in the year they amounted to US$19,000 million).



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