Pesce, Guzmán split over curbs on dollar purchases

The government’s latest crackdown on dollar purchases has exposed a split between Argentina’s top policy makers as they struggle to find a way back from the deepest crash on record.

The country’s dollar bonds extended their drop on Thursday, two days after Central Bank chief Miguel Pesce tightened already-strict currency controls.

Pesce wanted to ban savers from buying any dollars at all, while Economy Minister Martín Guzmán opposed the idea, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter. Ultimately, they reached a compromise after meeting with President Alberto Fernández early last week.

With no clear plan to pull the economy out of a deep three-year recession, the government is trying to cling on and protect the Central Bank’s dwindling dollar reserves at least until the soy harvest starts in March, when rising agricultural exports boost dollar receipts, according to two people with direct knowledge.

Guzmán had previously voiced his opposition to tighter controls, saying he favoured “‘normalisation” of Argentina’s currency markets.

The government’s economic team is also split over how long the curbs should stay in place. Some view the new controls as indefinite, while others want them to be temporary solutions, the people said. Only one of the measures, aimed at company debt in foreign currency, has a set expiry date, for the end of March.

A Central Bank spokesman denied that there’s any division with the Economy Ministry, and said the policy was coordinated between the leaders of the economic team. The Ministry didn’t reply to a request for comment.

The latest controls include a new tax for savers buying greenbacks. The government is also forcing companies with more than US$1 million in monthly capital debt payments through March to restructure or defer part of those obligations.

Recurring fear

The measures ended a period of relative calm in the turbulent economy, two weeks after a debt restructuring that was intended to restore some investor confidence in Argentina following the nation’s ninth default.

“There’s a high degree of unease in terms of investors looking at the country, and companies operating in the country,” said Jimena Blanco, director of Latin America research at consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft in Buenos Aires. “All of these policies are actually discouraging investment.”

The bleeding of dollar reserves is a recurring fear for Argentine governments. In 2011, the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner tightened the rules for individuals seeking to buy dollars.

Alberto Fernández criticised the controls around that time, saying they were an attack on personal freedom. But now, as president, and with international reserves at US$42.5 billion, close to a three-year low, he is implementing a similar policy himself.

On August 15, the Peronist leader publicly floated Pesce’s idea of cutting savers off entirely from buying dollars. About four million Argentines purchased dollars in the official market in August, a record high, according to a senior official.

The currency curbs, which are meant to stem an outflow of dollars, come on top of other existing economic restrictions, such as a ban on firing workers and a 30 percent tax on any purchases not made in pesos.

The economy is forecast to contract 12 percent this year, according to the government’s recently-published budget proposal.

Netflix subscriptions

The split comes as Pesce and Guzmán are leading Argentina’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, to which the nation owes US$44 billion from a failed bailout given to the Mauricio Macri administration. How Fernández’s government plans to eventually unwind currency controls will be a focal point of the new IMF programme.

Forcing private companies to restructure their dollar debt may complicate the IMF talks, analysts warn.

“This is likely to make negotiations with the IMF more difficult, as they are effectively killing the private sector debt market and hence Argentina’s repayment capacity,” says Marcos Buscaglia, co-founder of Argentine consulting firm Alberdi Partners.

With Argentines stuck inside due to lockdown measures to curb the coronavirus pandemic, the new measures hit home: If citizens subscribe to Netflix or Spotify to relieve the boredom, those purchases will count toward the US$200 they can purchase each month – and will be subject to a 65 percent tax.

The measures are likely to further hit Fernández’s popularity, which had already been falling as cases of the virus rise, Buscaglia added.

“It’s a real bomb to the Argentine middle class,” he said.