By Santiago Del Carril
Herald Staff
But not all economists found the steep hike strange, adhering to line that the amount the currency had temporarily depreciated wasn’t as important as where it ended.
“The volatility of the currency fluctuations doesn’t really matter, it has to do with the speculators,” Estanislao Malic, an economist for the Centre of Financial Studies for the Development of Argentina (Cefidar), told the Herald. He minimized the increase by also arguing that it wasn’t very high.
“If you look at the big picture, this was only a 1.3-percentage point jump,” when calculating it against the 6.84 peso rate it was at the beginning of the day, Malic added.
Since the beginning of January the official peso has already depreciated 15.27 percent.
The so-called “blue” dollar, which is another potential problem for the government if the gap with the official rate becomes too wide, has also followed the official rate depreciation but the very nature of a small market means that sharp fluctuations are common.
The illegal rate closed at 11.86 pesos yesterday, 9 cents shy of the record 11.95 pesos reached last week. Some analysts have argued that if the official rate becomes highly volatile it might even further increase demand for the illegal dollar because people are anxious to exchange a currency that is depreciating exponentially faster for dollars no matter what the price.
However, Andrés Asiain, who is the director of the Center of Economic and Social Studies of Scalabrini Ortiz (CESO) denied this was the case.
“This increase demonstrates that the depreciation has accelerated in the past few months, but it won’t affect the blue market,” said Asiain.
@delcarril
Herald Staff
But not all economists found the steep hike strange, adhering to line that the amount the currency had temporarily depreciated wasn’t as important as where it ended.
“The volatility of the currency fluctuations doesn’t really matter, it has to do with the speculators,” Estanislao Malic, an economist for the Centre of Financial Studies for the Development of Argentina (Cefidar), told the Herald. He minimized the increase by also arguing that it wasn’t very high.
“If you look at the big picture, this was only a 1.3-percentage point jump,” when calculating it against the 6.84 peso rate it was at the beginning of the day, Malic added.
Since the beginning of January the official peso has already depreciated 15.27 percent.
The so-called “blue” dollar, which is another potential problem for the government if the gap with the official rate becomes too wide, has also followed the official rate depreciation but the very nature of a small market means that sharp fluctuations are common.
The illegal rate closed at 11.86 pesos yesterday, 9 cents shy of the record 11.95 pesos reached last week. Some analysts have argued that if the official rate becomes highly volatile it might even further increase demand for the illegal dollar because people are anxious to exchange a currency that is depreciating exponentially faster for dollars no matter what the price.
However, Andrés Asiain, who is the director of the Center of Economic and Social Studies of Scalabrini Ortiz (CESO) denied this was the case.
“This increase demonstrates that the depreciation has accelerated in the past few months, but it won’t affect the blue market,” said Asiain.
@delcarril
