© Reuters. The dollar takes a leap in the parallel market of Argentina and breaks a new mark
Buenos Aires, Apr 13 (EFE).- The price of the dollar in the informal market of Argentina, to which citizens go due to the restrictions for official purchase, broke a new mark this Thursday when it reached 400 pesos due to a mix of factors, combined with distrust of the local currency.
The US currency in the parallel market started this week at 392 pesos, fell one unit the next day and then jumped 10 pesos in three days, and part of the reason is a readjustment to the current inflation levels of the South American country.
The latest official data noted an interannual increase of 102.5% in February and 13.1% in the first two months of this year, in addition to the monthly report of market analysts consulted by the Argentine Central Bank, they project 110% for the whole of 2023, 10.2 percentage points above the measurement of the previous month.
In this sense, the prices of the currency that is sold in markets outside government control, but to which the public resorts daily, is catching up with the increase in prices.
At the state-owned Banco Nación -where operations are restricted to 200 dollars a month per person and under certain conditions-, the dollar remained stable this Thursday, at a maximum of 220.75 pesos for retail sales.
On the other hand, Argentina is in an electoral year with political internals that affect both the ruling and opposition groups, the constant tensions open the door to possible scenarios that the market will not receive with grace.
“It happens that the tensions in the internal coalitions continue to be red hot and for the moment they do not clear up the doubts regarding the candidates, which not only increases political noise. it also has negative implications for the economic challenges to be managed during the transition”, indicated the economist Gustavo Ber.
To combat the lack of “legal” foreign currency within its own bank, the Government of Alberto Fernández enabled multiple types of conditional, fixed and exclusive exchange rates so that sectors such as agriculture do not accumulate their stocks or go to external markets.
The first settlements of the new “agricultural dollar” at 300 pesos totaled 94 million in foreign currency, but concerns still prevail among operators regarding the rate of entry of these currencies and the balance to be retained in order to recover reserves during this stage.
“Financial dollars continue to respond calmly -beyond the readjustment of the free due to rebalancing from placements in pesos-, but without deflating strongly, since in the background dollarization continues for the pre-electoral period and the greater monetary issue for the ‘agro dollar ‘” Ber added.
The financiers operated today with an upward trend. The “cash with settlement” (CCL, which consists of buying stocks or bonds locally with Argentine pesos and selling them in dollars on Wall Street) rose 1%, to 402.14 pesos per unit.
While the “bag dollar” or “MEP dollar” (which is obtained by buying assets that are listed both in pesos and in dollars, are paid in pesos upon purchase and are sold in dollars on the Argentine stock market) increased by 0. 5%, at 388.14 pesos.
