It is an antiphon. Argentina needs fresh dollars. And the new Minister of the Economy, Sergio Massa, has been developing, since taking office on August 3, various strategies to bail out the coffers of the central bank, in chronic tension, and even more recently, despite exports at their highest. . According to the evaluations of private firms, the net reserves – which the Central Bank does not detail – amounted in August to barely 1 billion dollars (1.02 billion euros).
“The problem is not so much obtaining dollars as keeping them: they end up leaving the banks because companies and individuals do not trust banking institutions”analyzes Javier Casabal, economist at the investment bank Adcap, which estimates the amount held under the mattresses of Argentines at 146 billion dollars, or in safes, since 2003. A sum that does not take into account the parallel market, where Argentines get plenty of supplies, continuing to reflect the same financial and cultural deficiency: the lack of confidence in the peso, fueled by repeated crises.
Encouraged to export
Main measure of the new Minister of the Economy, so far crowned with success but coming to an end on Friday, September 30: what the press has baptized the “military dollar”. On September 5, a tailor-made rate of one dollar for 200 pesos was established for soybean exporters, in order to accelerate foreign sales of this key product in the agricultural sector. This value comes in addition to the bouquet of exchange rates already available in the country, in particular the official one, worth 146 pesos – contained by the State in order to curb inflation by nearly 80% over one year. – and the parallel, of 289 pesos, Tuesday, September 27.
Dollars are also needed to keep the peso afloat and ultimately pay down debt.
The latter is the temperature that economic players actually use for their transactions, the controlled rate being deemed artificially too low, especially for exports. It is for this reason that agricultural companies were reluctant to sell their harvest abroad. The intermediate value of the “soybean dollar” has encouraged many companies to export over the past three weeks, generating the entry of 6 billion dollars into the country, according to a provisional report of 23 September. A good deal for the State, which levies a tax on the export of this product of around 33%.
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