2023-10-07 11:00:01
Uncertainty This is what the businessmen showed at the IDEA colloquium in Mar del Plata, due to the not entirely convincing and forceful proposals of the candidates for the presidency of the Nation.
Almost 99% of the executives and businessmen consulted by Reuters rejected the possibility of dollarizing the Argentine economy as proposed by the ultra-liberal Javier Milei, one of the favorites to win the presidential elections at the end of October, despite rampant inflation.
Of the 125 company representatives surveyed in recent days by this agency at an emblematic corporate meeting in the resort of Mar del Plata, 66.7% showed a preference for a bimonetary regime (dollar-peso) and the remaining 31.7% He chose to maintain domestic use only of the weight. Only 1.6% favored dollarization.
The bimonetary option was proposed by the center-right candidate Patricia Bullrich and the continuity of the peso by the Minister of Economy and presidential candidate of the ruling party Sergio Massa, in the midst of a prolonged financial crisis that threatens to worsen.
“It is very complicated for companies based in Argentina to think about dollarization,” said a senior executive in the automotive sector. “We are left without an anchor to adjust the monetary variables and the experiences in other countries (El Salvador and Ecuador) have not been good either,” he added during an impasse at the annual colloquium of the Institute for Business Development of Argentina (IDEA).
ENTER THE BALLOON
Most of the polls for the presidential elections on October 22 show the libertarian Milei as the leader, closely followed by Massa and then Bullrich, although they discount that the close competition will be defined in November in a runoff in which the three are fighting to enter.
80% of the businessmen consulted said they would prefer Bullrich as president, considering that she has the most credible plan to normalize the economy, compared to 11% who favored Massa and just 7% for Milei. The rest leaned toward candidates with fewer chances of victory.
The economic scenario “is very complicated,” said Claudio Belocopitt, head of the medical services firm Swiss Medical. “You can’t expect to have a patient in intensive care forever (…) things can get worse,” he added. Faced with a domestic currency under constant devaluation pressure, the official exchange rate controlled by the Central Bank, currently 350 pesos per dollar – compared to the almost 800 pesos paid in alternative markets – should fluctuate in a range between 650 and 1,000 units, according to executives.
By Jorge Otaola and Nicolás Misculin
Reuters Agency
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