Exchange houses think new ‘Blue’ dollar’s floor came to stay

As the climbing of the so called “blue dollar” keeps threatening on not stopping, exchange houses representatives told Ambito.com that it’s a snowball situation that will get bigger unless some government’s “friends” show up willing to sell some large amounts of greenback.

Likewise, sources at the finance district indicated that AR$8.40 per dollar “seems to be the new exchange rate’s floor for the black market, and there are no expectations to see it edging down.”

“The so called “blue dollar” is seeking for its new stabilization price and abrupt jumps won’t stop until the market finds that point.”

Furthermore, experts explained that the demand of the so called “tourist dollar” has drastically increased within the past days as the 6-day Easter and Malvinas War Memorial holidays (March 28-April 2) are approaching.

The informal peso, which is measured by Reuters, ended at 8.70/8.75 per dollar yesterday, bringing the difference with the official exchange rate to 71.7 percent, and lowering the difference with the “credit/debit card dollar” from 37 percent to 31.8 percent.

This decrease is the result of last Monday’s government decision to hike a levy on credit/debit card purchases abroad by five percentage points to 20 percent and extended the measure to holiday packages paid for at home. The credit card charge can be used as a tax credit to be deducted from income or wealth tax at the end of the year.

Thus, sources said that in order to keep the previous difference (37%), the “blue dollar” exchange rate’s floor should be around AR$8.40 per dollar, hence confirming that what happened yesterday and continues today is not something occasional but a fact that arrived to stay.