IMPORTS AND DOLLAR SAVING WILL COST U$S 375 MILLION IN SEVEN DAYS TO THE BCRA

The Central Bank (BCRA) sold u$s 100 million and played the role of main foreign exchange provider in the wholesale exchange market for the seventh consecutive wheel, a period in which it had to release u$s 375 million of its reserves. The entity led by Alejandro Vanoli suffers from the drop in the supply of sojadollars after the end of the harvest season, the increased demand for dollar savings and the need to authorize imports to boost economic activity. Anyway, thanks to the Chinese yuan, the reserves are sustained.

The sales figures reported by BCRA spokespersons are lower than what private bank tables see on their screens. Those operators calculated the official sales of yesterday in u$s 150 million and those of the last seven wheels added in u$s 560 million.

Beyond the debate on numbers, the agreement between all is that the BCRA's operating table is authorizing more import payments than in the first half of the year. This table requires private banks to communicate in advance the purchases of foreign currency that their importing clients must make and exceed the 150,000 u$s, in order to regulate which is carried out, which is not and which is subdivided into various operations distributed on different days.

“The authorizations arrive earlier than usual and with the green light for everything. They hardly ask you to distribute a large purchase over several days to regulate the impact on reserves, they are much more lax on this issue, which in my opinion is for electoral purposes: imports improve economic activity at voting time They said in a bank.

According to operators, the demand for dollar savings is so important that it adds up to compel the BCRA to sacrifice its dollars. Yesterday, 91.4 million u$s and 209 million u$s were sold in the two days that go from August (see cover).
"Banks have had very little availability of their own dollars since last year the BCRA limited the net foreign currency position to 20% of equity, with which most of what they sell to savers replenish it on the same day," they said. in another entity.

The entity led by Vanoli is forced to put dollars from its own coffers because the private offer decreased a lot after the end of the harvest. According to data from the Chamber of the Oil Industry-Cereal Exporters Center (Ciara-CEC), in the second quarter the average of export settlements of its members was u$s 589 million weekly. Last week only 368 million u$s entered and in this, so far, the settlement remains very weak according to operators.

But despite strong sales, the BCRA's reserves remain. Yesterday, 33,880 million u$s remained, 29 million u$s below the previous day's level and only 47 million u$s below the time this sales streak began. The entity covers those losses with yuan of the Chinese swap. As of June, there were more than u$s 8 billion yuan in reserves.

SOURCE: CHRONIST