Limit operations to exchange dollars outside the official market – Economy

The Government ordered a series of measures to discourage operations with local financial assets carried out for the sole purpose of transferring pesos to dollars. The goal basically pointsto end with the so-called "curl", that is, the purchase of a bond with dollars purchased in the market at $ 58 on average to sell it in pesos only minutes later and get a higher exchange rate (yesterday it was $ 63.30 in average) which would be obtained by selling in banks or exchange houses. In this way gains were achieved that were 4/5% at the beginning of the week, but in some cases they expanded to 9% on the eve.That type of operations exploded this week and came to justify yesterday just over a third of the volume of transactions made on the stock exchange with public titles. Yesterday there were more than 50,000 operations with the Bonar 2024 (AY24), the most chosen bond in recent days for these operations, when the usual were about 7,000 transactions per wheel.

The amount of operations was such, many for small amounts, that in the last two wheels at times the system by which these transactions are carried out collapsed.

This led last night to the Central Bank (BCRA) to introduce a series of modifications to Communication "A" 6760, which gave rise to the new exchange restrictions 10 days ago that were embodied in Communication "A" 6780.

There it is provided, for instance, that people who enter the market to make use of the option of acquiring up to US $ 10,000 per month, must sign an affidavit by which they will commit not to allocate those funds "to the purchase in the secondary market of securities within the 5 business days from the settlement date of said exchange transaction ".

The measure will be complemented in the next few hours by rules that will be announced by the National Securities Commission (CNV) and that will seek that the company or the investor who resorts to operations with assets in order to make currency exchange in front of what they call the "price risk".

This implies the setting of minimum terms (they had been up to 72 business hours a few years ago, but this time they would be standardized in 120 hours) so that they must face the risk of variation in the price of the public title or share, which will prevent them be certain of the final exchange rate that will arise from that operation.

"By limiting the possibility of operating immediate cash assets to move dollars to pesos at the highest implicit exchange rate, they seek to speculate to become more risky. It is a disincentive," finance specialist Guillermo Jerónimo Güerci told the newspaper. The nation.

Until yesterday to make the so-called "curl" (in financial jargon) you only had to buy dollars from an account that would later be applied to the purchase of a bond that is also traded in currencies. Moments later, they proceeded to sell, but in their version in pesos, to make the difference. This operation could be repeated several times, as long as the limit of buying for up to US $ 10,000 available for people since last Monday, or with dollars that were already in an account prior to the restrictions is not violated.

The "boom" of operations that broke out in the last three days also brought operational problems to digital banks and web financial platforms that allow to open accounts and be able to operate in a few minutes with a selfie and scanning the ID. Hence, some of them, persuaded from the BCRA (which had clarified to them by a communication that they could be incurring violations of the foreign exchange law), had already begun to limit this type of operations to their clients.

From the official bodies they clarified that the idea is not to hinder the stock exchange channel for companies, whose access to the cash market has been forbidden since last Monday. "It is a way that will remain open; it is only sought that there is no speculation to help trigger the exchange gaps," they explained.

These gaps had doubled over the course of the week to reach 9% in the case of the US Dollar or MEP, which allowed the "roll", or up to almost 20% in that of the "cash bill", which also allows the foreign exchange outflow and, in that way, also hits the reserves of the BCRA. Basically because the diffusion of these divergent prices with that of the official dollar tend to install the idea that the value of the latter is fictitious and, therefore, to feed the demand for dollars, which is what they seek to discourage.

The official reading is that these channels were draining dollars that had to be turned over to the official market, a suspicion that increased in the last two wheels as the cash operated volume did not exceed US $ 400 million, even when the mandatory deadlines are in force to exporters to liquidate.