📉 The Argentine Central Bank made its largest dollar sale of 2025, selling $474 million, the second-largest sale since Milei’s government took office.
🏦 This sale reduced the accumulated balance for March to $150 million, down from approximately $600 million, due to a halt in dollar-denominated loans.
💳 The decrease in dollar loans is linked to reduced credit card financing in dollars, impacting the Central Bank’s dollar purchases.
@ClaveBursatilTV:
“Argentina. Let’s move on to another important topic of the week from the fundamentals: Dollar purchases by the Central Bank. Monday, it bought 36 million; Tuesday, it bought 268 million. A lot. Wednesday, it bought 80 million; Thursday, it bought 50 million. But on Friday, no, 474 million in sales. It’s the largest sale of 2025 and the second-largest selling day by the Central Bank since Milei’s government. Since December 2024, there hasn’t been such a strong sale. And everyone is wondering what happened. The truth is that there is no conclusive and clear explanation. There are several elements, and I will show them all to you. With this strong sale, the month of March accumulates 150 million dollars. We were at about 600 million in accumulation; we are in mid-March, and that dropped to only 150, but fortunately, the balance remains positive for the month. Let’s observe with an Econiews chart the loans in dollars, which have been explaining the greater accumulation of dollars by the Central Bank. This phenomenon in which there are companies, there are entities that take out loans in dollars, and part of that, they sell for pesos in the single free exchange market, and those dollars they sell go to the Central Bank’s coffers. And on the other hand, we have the fall in deposits since the end of the tax amnesty until today, by drip. Every day, a little bit of deposits leave the banking system. And what does this tell us about the context in which this strong sale on Friday occurred, which also happened on a day in which there was a very high volume of operations, both in the single free exchange market and in the dollar futures market? Well, as a first factor, dollar loans stopped. Let’s see that this line stopped rising, and this line, dollar loans, are largely what explains the Central Bank’s purchases. If dollar loans stop, the Central Bank will buy fewer dollars. Why are there fewer dollar loans? Because many of the dollar loans taken out in the system have to do with the financing of dollar consumptions on credit cards. That is, you buy something in dollars, the card pays for it, but the card finances you for a month. That is, the card needs dollar financing during the time that purchase is uncovered, or since you haven’t paid yet, you still haven’t put your dollars for your purchases of something you bought a month ago. So the card goes into debt in dollars to cover that balance until you pay. In fact, according to Central Bank figures, if we consider dollar loans but exclude credit cards, dollar loans in the system continue to grow a little. Credit cards stopped requesting dollar loans. Credit card users canceled those dollar loans, and that is why we see a drop in deposits from people’s accounts who use dollars to cancel credit cards, and the cards no longer have to request loans.”
You can see the exact part of the YouTube video where the stock is discussed by @ClaveBursatilTV below:
View the video on YouTube.
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