Argentina extends soy dollar to all products until November 17

Argentina’s government has extended the soy dollar scheme to all products until November 17, two days before the runoff presidential election scheduled for November 19, the Ministry of Economy announced on Tuesday.

The extension decree says importers can 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 versus the current 25% that is valid now.

The remaining 70% should be exchanged at the official rate, currently at 365 pesos per dollar.

“As the financial dollar rises, conditions improve for exporters”, analyst Javier Preciado Patiño told Agricensus. 

The CCL dollar stood at 980.62 pesos per dollar on Tuesday.

The decision landed 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 favored his main rival, Javier Milei.

“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 said, a move that could change producers' behavior in relation to sales.

Soybean sales last month were slow, as producers hesitated to sell without a clear indication of the direction the country's economic policy would take.

The fourth edition of the soy dollar scheme started on September 5 and was initially supposed to end on September 30.

It was then extended until October 25 and on October 11, the government included sunflower, sunoil, sunseeds, and barley, to the program, while signaling the possibility of extending the scheme to other products as well.

Back in early September, sources believed Argentina had around 7 million mt of soybeans available for trade, but now the volume is believed to be around 3 to 4 million mt.  

Since September 5, soybean sales totaled 5.1 million mt.

“It is hard to think it will incentivize more farmer selling as there's not much left, but we'll see”, a source familiar with the Argentine market told Agricensus.