The firepower went through the water | The loss is accelerated …

International reserves set the pace of the financial crisis. Over the past 4 weeks, they have dropped $ 10,685 million and the decline is not over yet. On Monday, they fell by $ 344 million. They stood at 57,915 million euros, the lowest figure since December. The main discussion of the market is how many clean dollars will remain in the monetary authority for the next management.

The Central Bank's currencies are not all of the body and that is why some economists talk about net reserves (they discount the debts that the entity has with other investors). Nearly 58 billion dollars of the raw reserves They can be broken down into different sources. The result is that 44 billion are currencies that can not be freely used and others $ 14 billion is own resources.

* The lace deposit In foreign currencies, banks are one of the main items to be deducted from gross reserves. Suman $ 15 billion and they are not an badet of the central but belong to customers of the bank. They are simply stored in the reserves for a reason of regulation of the financial system.

* The exchange traded with the monetary authority of China they are another resource that does not belong directly to the BCRA. The amount of these instruments is not less than: $ 19 billion (the third part of the bookings). At the central level, they may decide to use these currencies, but they must pay an interest rate in return and renew their debt or return them in the short term. Argentina for a contractual issue can not conflict with the IMF if it wants to activate the exchange.

* The station calculates in its reserves approximately $ 8 billion the Fund has contributed to specific purposes. This is about 6 billion for strengthening the coffers of the monetary authority and an additional 2 billion that were recorded as currencies in Treasury Treasury accounts)

The accounts are now simple. The gross currencies of Central total 58 billion. The amount falls to 14 billion when the minimum reserves are subtracted, the swap with China and the currencies for specific objectives of the IMF. Those are the net reserves This is the figure that is heard most often at city consultants' luncheons.

The million dollar question is how much will these net reserves be at the end of the year. This is not a minor fact. These are the currencies that the public sector can use to try to control a currency or pay deadlines without having to explain to anyone. In simple terms: they are the firepower of the Central Bank.

Market estimates focus on two scenarios. The first is optimistic: considers that the IMF spends $ 6 billion of the stand-by credit planned until December. In this case, net reserves would end in 2019 above $ 5 billion. The second is pessimistic: it calculates that the Fund does not approve payments. The result would be that net reserves by the end of the year would be zero. and with the added problem that the exchange with China could not be activated.

In both scenarios, it is badumed that $ 7 billion in debt will be paid until the end of the year (5 billion let and 2 000 bond interest) and it is also calculated interventions for nearly $ 6 billion in the Change market cover the dollarization portion of the maturity of fixed terms and Lecap.