The US dollar in Argentina’s parallel or ‘blue’ market continued to soar on Thursday reaching a new record high of 9.16 and 9.20 Pesos buying and selling price which over twenty cents more than on Wednesday.
The US dollar in Argentina’s ‘blue’ or parallel market skyrocketed on Wednesday to 8.91 and 8.94 Pesos, beating the previous record of 8.75 Pesos from March 20, previous to Holy Week. The official rate meantime remained relatively stable and closed trading at 5.13 and 5.18 Pesos, which means the gap between the two markets stands at 71%.
President Cristina Fernandez called an urgent meeting on Wednesday evening of her economic team following a day of hectic trading in the currency exchange market which had the US dollar climb to 8.75 Pesos in the parallel market, expanding the gap with the official rate to almost 70%.
The black market dollar exchange rate in Argentina pierced the milestone 8 Pesos mark while the official rate climbed to 5.09 Pesos with the gap between the two markets reaching 57%. The other ‘cash’ option: buying Argentine shares in Buenos Aires and reselling them in New York climbed 10 cents to 8.46 Pesos.
Argentina’s central bank reported that at the end of January it had reserves totalling 42.65 billion dollars which is the lowest level since President Cristina Fernandez took office in December 2007. At the time the central bank international reserves totalled 46.2 billion dollars. Only in April 2007 were reserves at a lower level, 38.6bn dollars.
Argentina's economy is seen growing 4.6% next year, improving after drought and a slowdown in top trading partner Brazil took a toll in 2012, the central bank president said in an interview published on Sunday. She also advanced that the so called ‘dollar clamp’ or strict restrictions on the purchase of foreign currency remain.
Argentina made payments of over 3.5 billion dollars on Friday in GDP-linked bonds which refer to the 2005 and 2010 rescheduling agreed with creditors who originally held 2001/02 defaulted sovereign bonds. At the same bank the Central bank revealed that international reserves have fallen to its lowest since 2007.
The Argentine central bank has been financing the Treasury with so called ‘transitory advances’ to the tune of 101 billion Pesos (approx 20bn dollars), a sum which is expected to increase given the additional outlays of the end of the year particularly with the Christmas bonus.
Switzerland’s government rejected a law suit filed by US hedge funds asking to set an embargo on Argentina's assets deposited in Switzerland based Bank for International Settlements as they claim the payment of a 1 billion dollars debt.
Finance minister Hernan Lorenzino said on Thursday that the international crisis will not affect Argentina and attributed this to the policy of drastically cutting the country’s sovereign debt which now stands at only 40% of GDP.