MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine central bank says it has enough reserves to contain the run on the US dollar

Marcó del Pont, “we have more than 40 billion dollars in reserves”

With insistent rumours of imminent measures to try and control the value of the US dollar in Argentina, Central Bank Governor Mercedes Marcó del Pont, stressed that the country has more than 40 billion dollars in reserves “to manage the foreign exchange market avoiding sharp changes”.

“Now opposition voices are saying there will be a currency’s devaluation after October’s mid-term elections. But that will not happen because the government has a very solid background policy that will stand”, Marcó del Pont told reporters.

“The Government’s policy aims at maintaining and deepening the process of productive transformation”, the official said, thus emphatically discarding rumours of any possible new traumatic change of policy.

Likewise, Marcó del Pont explained that ”as of the disturbances seen on the foreign currency exchange market in recent days, many unfounded rumours were said. But this is not new as in recent years there were many attempts to argue that the only relevant variable to ensure growth and competitiveness was the exchange rate”.

The current exchange rate for the US dollar in the official market for imports and travelling, following along bureaucratic procedure with no guarantee of a positive reply to the request stands at 5.10 Pesos.

However in the parallel market or ‘blue’ market last week it reached 8.90 Pesos to the greenback then eased to 8.30 and over the weekend was trading at 8.60 Pesos

The bright side of the situation is that Buenos Aires and other Argentine attractions have been flooded during the long Easter weekend by tourists from neighbouring countries, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, taking advantage of the almost 80% gap between the official and blue exchange rate.