Finally, the Ministry of Economy launched the debt swap in pesos to surf the storm clouds that the electoral calendar brought and the idea that the market was running its bow and did not finance beyond the very short term.
In the banks and in the Economy they estimate that the level of acceptance could be around 70% at a general level and the entities told Sergio Massa that the big private players will enter with approximately 60-80% of their holdings.
Taking into account that private banks have 20% of the maturities that are exchanged, and will contribute quite a bit to the operation, it is believed that they will add something like 14 points to the overall exchange. Later, it is estimated that 50% will be explained by the possession and acceptance of the operation of public banks.
“It’s going to be a good number. What’s left are the holdings of the Mutual Funds that can’t be that long and need liquidity. And then you have other investors hanging around that won’t get in either. But in general the level of acceptance will be between 60% and 75%”, summed up a banker who participated in the meeting in Economy.
Massa, in the meeting with the bankers, admitted that attacking the maturities of the debt in pesos was the great unknown that the International Monetary Fund had with Argentina for this 2023. The minister even recounted that “in a meeting last November, the Fund was not concerned about meeting the reserve goals, of the surplus, but rather they were concerned about the debt in pesos”.
Massa pointed out that this measure is “a signal” to Washington to clear up one (not the only one) of the fears that trigger currency crises in Argentina.
The banks say that the exchange is positive and that Together for Change “it was wrong to make noise” because the operation is positive. “There is a clean 2023 and in the second semester they will go for public intrasector debts, which explain 85% of the maturities,” said the source.
Massa announced that the public intrasector swap will be longer than that of the private ones: it will be from 2026-2027.
In any case, in the financial sector they assure that the exchange is still just another “patch” to reach December. “It does not attack the rest of the problems, it is clear. It does not clear up a scenario of exchange stress either because it only attacks one of the channels through which a run could come, which are the bonds. But the rest is there and it is too early to say that the gap at these levels does not have more to go up,” says a banker.
In the entities they warn that the drought of dollars and the electoral risk is sufficiently “disruptive” to be able to generate exchange tensions in the alternative dollars.
Although in historical terms the CCL is “very expensive”, says this manager of a private bank who participated in the meeting, “I do not rule out that due to electoral volatility the gap will go to 150% and then drop to around 95%”.
“This volatility will generate that after touching those peaks, it is convenient to sell dollars, because it will not stay that high for a long time. But I have no doubt that this gap is not what we are going to see throughout the year,” he said. .
The Economist
