Carrera’s statement aroused criticism from those who answered that the rise in financial dollars was much higher than rate of the aforementioned instruments (so far this year the Cash with Settlement grew 70.4% and the MEP 71.5%) and also of those who pointed out the forward exchange risk represented by stopping in pesos. However, Carrera explained: “This is not a recommendation on how to invest and it is not a portfolio with bonds-letters-shares with purchase and sale of assets. The most conservative investment is looked at. The point is to see how much different fixed terms performed against inflation and the dollar. And it was positive ”.
Contrary to what was reported by Carrera, the director of the Ledesma consulting firm, Gabriel Caamano Gómez, tweeted a graph showing how the traditional fixed terms advanced less than the dollar, now taking January 1 of this year as a starting point. Caamano indicated that the variation in the nominal exchange rate until July was 20%, while the effective rate of the 30-day fixed terms was 18.4%.
Before consulting Ambit, Caamaño maintained: “There is an inconsistency in the monetary policy, since, despite the fact that they tell us that they are productive and absorb a lot, in most months the rate curve that ends up being generated in pesos lost against the depreciation rate that drives the Central. In my example, I put together the table from January. If it had started in December, perhaps the fixed-term rate would win a little, but the risk must be evaluated, since the dollar is a safer asset than the fixed term ”.
On the other hand, the director of Ledesma added: “A producer of tradable goods, for example soybeans, earns more by standing on soybeans than by selling them and putting the pesos in a fixed term. In some way they are leveraging the absorption of tradables, which is what generates problems in the exchange market ”. By way of conclusion, Caamano declared: “They have to raise the rate.”
It should be remembered that the peso has been depreciating at a rate administered by the Central, in a strategy called crawling peg. During several weeks there was a uniform variation of 6 cents per day, something that this month was broken, since there was greater dispersion in that sense, although the homeopathic doses continue.
Returning to Carrera’s data, it can be seen that, of the aforementioned instruments, the one that performed the most was the fixed term that adjusts for inflation (that is, the UVA) and adds a margin of 1%. However, in the Central Bank’s payrolls it is seen that the volume of these fixed terms has been plummeting in recent months, even nominally: while in March private deposits in this tool averaged $ 57,014 million, today they stand at $ 34,962 million , despite the fact that total deposits in pesos have been growing month by month (in fact, in July they increased 27.1% year-on-year in real terms).
Why don’t UVA fixed terms follow this trend? The explanations are various: there are economists who mention that the saver is accustomed to traditional fixed terms and others who emphasize that the drawback is that UVAs require having immobilized money for 90 days, unlike traditional ones, which can be renewed in 30 “The banks do not promote them, because the instrument does not serve them. They cannot fit it well against other assets ”, added the economist and researcher at the National University of Avellaneda, Sergio Chouza.
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