In another era, Reconquista, San Martín or Sarmiento were emblematic streets of the exchange business. The exchange houses were counted from tens and lived with banks, offices and an incessant flow of office workers. Today, that landscape is just a memory. Low, empty premises and a deserted postcard dominate a microcenter that lost its rhythm. The stocks and pandemic did their own, and a sector that knew how to be key was reduced to its minimum expression. Now, with the lifting of the stocks, The sector is excited to resurface from its ashes.
A silent retraction
Before the pandemic, the Central bank had registered between 220 and 230 exchange houses throughout the country. Today, the figure is barely 65. The contraction was sustained but deep, accelerated by quarantine, the Home Office and, above all, by the restrictions to operate with foreign currency.
For years, The exchange houses were practically out of the game. His operation was limited to a handful of authorized transactions, while the bulk of the market migrated to the banks or directly to the informal circuit. With each new measure of the BCRA, more blinds went down.
The reality is that the emptiness left by the exchange houses soon was filled. The “Trencites” – the street offer of the blue dollar – multiplied and became part of the urban landscape. On the paths of the microcenter, the informal sale became the main access road to the dollars for small savers.
Thus, the microcenter changed its physiognomy. Of crowded offices and tourists changing currencies, became a neighborhood with less movement, more closed local and an informal market that grew to the heat of repressed demand.
closed exchange houses.jpeg
Change of time: what happens to the end of the stocks
The new exchange regime, announced in April, authorizes the exchange houses to operate under the same conditions as the banks. They can freely sell official currencies to customers with funds declared in bank accounts, either withdrawing cash (up to US $ 15 per window) or transferring dollars to the outside without limit. Within this framework, as explained by the sector consulted by scope, The measure aroused expectations: some firms evaluate branches and others bet on more digital and agile formats. Even so, the recovery will be gradual and will be conditioned to the demand being active.
It is also true that although the stocks are left behind, the microcenter will not be the one before. The conversion is already underway, and the exchange business, to resurface, will do so under other rules: with less local, more digitalization and a different clientele. In general, a decrease in the informal market is expected, since legal and competitive access to the dollar will be attractive to the “trees.” If the new regime manages to sustain, the official windows could recover part of the lost prominence, although the street – and its physiognomy – already belongs to a new normality.
Related news :