The Argentine government has extended the soya dollar scheme to all products until 17 November – two days before the run-off upcoming presidential election, AgriCensus reported.
Announced by the country’s Ministry of Economy on 24 October, the extension decree said importers could use the CCL dollar (contado con liquidación, also known as the financial dollar) to liquidate 30% of the proceeds of exports, an increase of five percentage points compared to the previous 25% rate, the report on the same day as the announcement said.
The remaining 70% could be exchanged at the official rate, currently at 365 pesos/US$.
“As the financial dollar rises, conditions improve for exporters”, analyst Javier Preciado Patiño told AgriCensus.
The CCL dollar stood at 980.62 pesos/US$ on the day of the report.
The government’s announcement came after the minister of the economy, Sergio Massa, emerged as the surprise leader in Sunday’s presidential election, as polls held before the election had favoured his main rival, Javier Milei, AgriCensus wrote.
“This generates an expectation of continuity of the current economic policy, so I believe that a lot of the speculation about what could happen if other candidates assumed the presidency will now dissipate,” the analyst added.
The move could change producers’ behaviour in relation to sales, the report said.
Soyabean sales were slow last month with producers holding back from selling due to a lack of certainty over the direction the country’s economic policy would take, AgriCensus wrote.
The fourth edition of the soya dollar scheme started on 5 September and was initially due to end on 30 September.
Subsequently extended until 25 October, sunflower, sunflower oil, sunflowerseeds and barley were added to the scheme on 11 October while the government raised the possibility of extending the scheme to other products.
According to estimates by sources in early September, Argentina had around 7M tonnes of soyabeans to trade but the volume was believed to be around 3M-4M tonnes at the time of the report.
Since the start of the fourth edition of the soya dollar scheme on 5 September, soyabean sales had totalled 5.1M tonnes, the report said.
“It is hard to think it will incentivise more farmer selling as there's not much left, but we’ll see,” a source familiar with the Argentine market told AgriCensus.