MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Blue” dollar back on surging track day after Argentine elections

Massa was said to be planning new measures to address this situation shortly

The “blue” (a euphemism for “black market”) dollar stood at AR$ 1,100 Monday, an AR$ 200 increase from Friday's quotation, after Sunday's elections which saw Economy Minister Sergio Massa and Libertarian Congressman Javier Milei advance to the Nov. 19 runoff, it was reported in Buenos Aires.

Meanwhile, the official rate at the Banco de la Nación Argentina (BNA) was published at AR$ 347.5 / AR$ 365.5 (buy/sale).

Hence, the gap between both main quotations stood at 214.2% after an increase of AR$ 754 so far this year for the parallel version.

Maneuvers by local authorities to discourage the purchase/sale of foreign currency in the informal market continued Monday but once supply and demand arose, there was a coincidence in reference prices, contrary to the last rounds of last week where it was difficult to agree on a value and the publicized rate of the “blue” was nowhere to be found.

Massa was said to be planning new measures to address this situation shortly. In the meantime, Deputy Economy Minister Gabriel Rubinstein said the exchange rate will remain at AR$350 until Nov. 15, when a policy of daily devaluations at a rate of 3% per month will begin.

Also Monday Federal Police raids were reported in “caves” (illegal currency exchange parlors) in Nordelta, an exclusive area northwest of Buenos Aires. These operations have been going on since two weeks ago when the parallel dollar crossed the AR$ 1,000 barrier. Massa had promised the raids would continue and did not rule out any further arrests after the one of alias “The Croatian” (Ivo Rojnica) who has been said to have smuggled dollars out of the country and whose peddling was linked to the surge in the blue dollar rate.

In the meantime, Argentine authorities Monday extended export benefits to all activities. “In order to strengthen reserves, we are going to extend the Export Strengthening Program to all activities,” for 30 days, said Massa during a conference before foreign journalists. The new scheme allows exporters to liquidate 70% of their sales abroad at the official exchange rate, plus the remaining 30% at the so-called CCL rate, which is more than twice as high.