Bachelor of Economics (UBA). Economic Analyst of Libertad y Progreso.
FINANCIAL SCOPE – If there is a number that the economic team and the Central Bank are paying attention to, it is the exchange balance of foreign trade; that is, the cash flow of dollars that enter and leave the country as a product of commercial transactions. In October there were pending liquidation of exports for US $ 5,049 million. Until that moment, the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) recorded accumulated sales of US $ 46,556 million, although strictly speaking US $ 41,507 million entered, according to the Central Bank’s records.
The information shows that despite all the efforts made by the Government so that companies liquidate export dollars more quickly, this is not happening, and what is more, the differences have widened. In September the same calculation gave US $ 4,491 million
Official records reveal that in the tenth month of the year foreign sales were collected for US $ 3,979 million and purchases for US $ 3,935 million were paid. A surplus of just US $ 44 million was generated, much less than the US $ 612 million reported by INDEC. Although it is a meager figure, it is better than that of September, when the balance in favor had only been barely US $ 7 million. These are data from the Standardized Statistics on the Evolution of the Foreign Exchange Market published monthly by the BCRA. According to this information, in the first 10 months of the year paid imports totaled US $ 34,392 million.
If it is compared with the numbers of the Argentine Commercial Exchange that the INDEC elaborates, based on the Customs declarations, the purchases fit almost perfectly with the BCRA data, adding up to US $ 34,385 million.
Thus, in the INDEC papers there is a trade surplus of about US $ 12,171 million, but that specifically drops to US $ 7,115 when the real flows of foreign currency that passed through the Single Free Market are seen. Changes Although these are movements considered normal within the terms of foreign trade, the reality is that in daily management, it would hardly be enough to sustain the payment of imports.
Natalia Motyl, an economist at the Fundación Libertad y Progreso, considered that it is not to be expected that this difference can be closed while waiting for the dollars from the new harvest to come in between March and April of next year. “I wouldn’t bet so much on it. I’m not so sure that this can happen, ”Motyl told Ámbito.
Motyl warned that “it must be taken into account that the surplus that was achieved this year is not due to growth in exports but due to the fall in imports” as a result of the fall in activity. The economist considered that the measures announced by the Government to favor the liquidation of dollars, such as the reduction of withholdings of 3 points “were short-term.”
On the other hand, she pointed out that a positive effect may be the increase in the price of raw materials worldwide but that it also has a limited effect. “The price of commodities improved, but not as much as expected. Because the economies of the countries that buy from us are slowly improving ”, explained the analyst.
On the other hand, Motyl warned that “we must be careful in that the Argentine economy is becoming more prevalent and there is a risk of being an economy dependent on the value of one or two products as is the case with Bolivia or Venezuela. In the Argentine case, the product would be soy. “You can see that much more is being sold in volume, but with little added value,” said the economist, who pointed out that this process of primarization has been developing for about three years.
