Argentine president Mauricio Macri appointed Finance Minister Luis Caputo as president of the central bank on Thursday, after the outgoing head of the bank resigned and acknowledged having lost credibility.
Argentina’s central bank moved on Wednesday to improve its debt profile by offering to swap some of its one-month Lebac securities for paper of longer duration, the bank said in a statement.
Argentina asked the International Monetary Fund for financing to help stem a run from the Peso to the US dollar that is sparking a surge in interest rates and threatening to derail the country's economic recovery. The sum requested is estimated between 25 and 30bn dollars, 500% Argentina's IMF quota and could be disbursed in two forms, a flexible credit line or a precautionary credit line.
Argentina’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 300 basis points to 33.25% percent on Thursday, but the second steep rate increase in less than a week failed to stop the country’s peso currency from swooning to a record low. The local currency tumbled 7.83% to 23 per U.S. dollar. It had hit 21.2 to the greenback on Wednesday, the first trading day due to a holiday after the bank hiked the rate to 30.25% from 27.25% on Friday.
Argentina’s peso currency closed down 3.11% on Wednesday at an all-time low of 21.2 per U.S. dollar, even as the central bank continued selling dollars to try to halt the slide of the local currency, traders said. The currency’s sustained weakening showed a lack of investor confidence in Latin America’s third largest economy, which is blighted by one of the world’s highest inflation rates.
Argentina’s central bank held its benchmark interest rate at 27.25% on Tuesday, reiterating in a statement that high-frequency indicators suggested core inflation would remain high in April, but below March levels.
Argentina's central bank left the basic interest rate unchanged at 27.5%, a clear signal that inflation remains the main challenge of the country's monetary policy. The bank also revealed that last week it intervened in the local market with 400 million dollars to keep the US dollar in the range of 20/20,50 Pesos to the greenback.
Argentina's Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 1.8% in January 2018, after increasing 3.1% in December 2017, said the country's statistics office Indec. Despite the deceleration, the reading was higher than market expectations for the monthly consumer price inflation (+1.5%). The result was primarily influenced by higher costs for entertainment and culture (+3.5%).
Argentina’s central bank held its benchmark seven-day interbank lending rate at 27.25% on Wednesday, the monetary authority said in a statement, amid an increase in inflation expectations and “mixed signals” in prices so far this year.
The economic activity index in Argentina, a proxy for the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), rose 3.9% in November from a year before - decelerating from October, when the index posted an annual rise of 5.2%.