After the IDB loan, the Central Bank bought reserves and increased $600 million

After loan agreement Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Central Bank we bought reserves this Thursday for $145 million in the exchange market and closed the day with an increase of US $ 666 million. In this way, the stock of foreign currency rose again above US $ 27,000 million.

With this result, the BCRA stopped six consecutive rounds of currency selling and falling reserves. “It is due to the usual compensation at the beginning of the month, they go down for operational reasons on the last day and then they are compensated” explained official sources. But analysts believe that the Central Bank was assisted by an income of US$ 647 million from the IDB.

The Government made official this Thursday the approval of the financing of the multilateral organization, a line with a term of one year that actually redistributes loans approved by previous administrations for works and programs in transport, tourism, agricultural health, development digital during 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023.

That was the other factor that prevented a new drop in reserves The US$ 840 million interest payment to the Monetary Fund, which was due this Thursday, has not yet been executed. “Argentina has invested the levels to meet its commitments with the IMF. The Fund debits that account between the 1st and 6th of every month,” sources from the Ministry of Economy said.

The BCRA lost $ 593 million of reserves on Wednesday due to the payment of the bonus to importers (BOPREA), Wednesday’s net sales settlement and the intervention in cash with settlement (CCL) . Therefore, July ended with a drop of US$ 2,617 million, and net reserves ended with a negative balance of almost US$ 4,000 million, according to Cohen.

In terms of finances and debt, still A payment of US$ 530 million is pending from the Fund after the ninth review scheduled for August 10 and another of US$546 million if Argentina approves the tenth review on November 10. November 1 will be the last maturity of the year, for $830 million.

With no sign of new dollars after the last meeting with the head of the group, Kristalina Georgieva, in Brazil, the Minister of the Economy, Luis Caputo, is trying to advance a “financial bridge” to overcome a second a challenging semester abroad.

The minister expected this on Tuesday at a meeting with bankruptcy companies, in which he announced that he had promised until the end of 2025 capital payments of all debts denominated in dollars through REPO loans with banks and the dollars for interest January 2025 rates.

In addition, his team believed that the energy balance will reverse in August, which will increase the trade surplus.

July was the worst month in terms of reserves due to debt payments to the IMF and bondholders. There was also an unfavorable dynamic in the exchange market, which was comparable to the performance of the first months of the management of Javier Milei, in which he collected $ 17,000 million until the end of May, due to the devaluation of December and the quotas import.

This situation has been changed with more access to imports to the official market, energy purchases abroad at a time of greater consumption due to low temperatures and more access for companies and regions to the official market for the payment of debt obligations. All in the context of exchange rate appreciation due to the monthly increase of 2% in the wholesale dollar with inflation of 4%.

“Behind this poor performance, there is record private demand that cannot be compensated by export supply, which moved to the lowest level since early January. to Milei’s administration high of US$210 million on 07/02,” the PPI report noted.

In 2025, US$ 3.4 billion must be paid to the IMF in interest payments.