Hand in hand with what is presumed in the exchange market to be the normalization of the liquidation of agriculture, the market recovered volume yesterday and dollar quotes showed the greatest foreign exchange flow. The main financial dollar, the cash with settlement, fell 1.6% and closed at $1,095 while the MEP or Stock Market dollar fell 1.4% to $1,048, bringing both values back to the level prior to the rate increase applied last week when the Central Bank cut the monetary policy rate by 10 percentage points.
It was the second drop in two weeks, after obtaining poor results in the Treasury debt tender, with which it was interpreted that the decision was aimed at forcing greater liquidity for the Treasury from the disarmament of debt of investors in the Bank’s repos Central. Along with a series of days in which weather conditions and specific events such as the oil workers’ strike affected the income of dollars from the countryside, prices in the exchange market were under greater pressure, which finally gave way to the greater supply of foreign currency. That is to say, if, as expected, the rate of liquidation becomes more intense, the trend in prices will once again be downward and, with this, the gap will return to minimum levels.
“Little by little we are beginning to notice more volume of operations. The MULC operated 50% more than yesterday and it was noticeable in the cable and MEP market. The day started well, there was a slight rebound at midday and towards the end it went down again. Ends the day at 1090 CCL and 1048 MEP. Exchange around 4%. Because of how the round ended, we believe that tomorrow could be another day of decline for the exchange rate,” warned Nicolás Cappella, analyst at the IEB Group.
Yesterday the market traded USD 344 million, of which the Central Bank retained USD 219, with a balance for importers of USD 125 million, which according to Cappella indicates the progressive normalization of the liquidation of the harvest, of which there is still a long way to go. about to see. In fact, the latest update from the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange indicates that the advance of the soybean harvest, which has already begun in May, is located at just 36% of the projected production, which means a record delay, only surpassed by the delays recorded almost 10 years ago, in 2015.
“There are expectations that this week the liquidation of agriculture will begin to accelerate. We hope that the supply of exporters will increase with the liquidation of the bulk and, as a result, contain the CCL due to the 80/20% scheme,” said the financial consulting firm PPI yesterday, alluding to the “blend dollar.” In that sense, he noted that the financial dollar rose 2.8% in the last week driven by the BCRA’s new rate reduction and, above all, by lower supply from exporters in this market. The analysts’ assumptions, based particularly on the greater arrival of grains to the port of Rosario, which received some 8,000 trucks since the weekend, began to be confirmed in yesterday’s round.
No less important data contributes to stimulating this process: grain prices began to rise towards the end of last week in response to the climatic adversity faced by southern Brazil, which results in lower supply in international markets. Thus, soybeans increased their price by 7% in May, recovering the ground lost during April. Despite this, prices remain below last year’s level.
