Doubts about the results of market operators

Financial market operators estimated that real adherence to the debt swap was less than 60%, they questioned the information from the Ministry of Economy and played down the supposed success of the operation. “The debt swap obtained an acceptance of close to 57.7%, falling below the ‘floor’ zone of 65%/70% that the Government expected,” said Pedro Siaba Serrate, from PPI Finanzas, when asked by the media.

The consulting firm Aurum Valores spoke along the same lines, which, through its Twitter account, pointed out that the exchange was “poor, the private ones (the maturities that really matter) exchanged approximately 25% of what they had in their possession” .

He added that “some $3.3 trillion of nominal were left without being exchanged from private companies, which due to the dynamics of definitions will be about $3.6 trillion at maturity.”

Consequently, it concluded that “the maturities for the next four months held by private parties add up to almost US$10 billion valued at the MEP dollar. In summary, 75% of private investors did not validate extending terms beyond 2023”. The economist Gabriel Caamaño also emphasized the trick carried out by the Ministry of Economy to make the result of the operation look better.

“It seems that they sent the adhesion numbers mixed with the January operation so that it gives more than 60%, but it is below 60%,” he maintained on his social networks and added: “The prices at which they took are above the indicative and do not calculate the nominal annual rate of the operation”.

Siaba Serrate warned that “beyond the fact that we questioned the success that this operation could have previously, we believe that the result reflects the difficulty of the problem of the pesos that Argentina is facing.” In addition, she explained that Economy announced an acceptance of 64%, but that number also appeared in the previous exchange in January.