Report on the Evolution of the Foreign Exchange Market and the Foreign Exchange Balance

We present a new edition of this monthly publication, corresponding to September 2025, which analyzes the evolution of purchases and sales of foreign currency made by entities with clients through the foreign exchange market.

Executive summary

On Monday, September 22, decree 682/2025 was published. It set at 0% the rate of export duties on grains and meats for those who liquidate at least 90% of the foreign currency within three working days of the corresponding DJVE being made. It was in force until October 31, 2025 or until DJVEs for an amount equivalent to USD 7,000 million were registered, whichever comes first.

Its validity ended on Wednesday, September 24 in the afternoon when the quota of export registrations was completed.
In this framework, the clients of the entities sold USD 1,041 million in the foreign exchange market, while the National Treasury and the entities bought USD 1,650 million and USD 574 million, respectively. For its part, the BCRA sold USD 1,110 in the spot exchange market and made net payments through the Local Currency Payment System (SML) for USD 73 million.

The “Non-Financial Private Sector” was a net seller of foreign currency for USD 862 million in the foreign exchange market. Within this group, the “Oilseeds and Cereals” sector was the main sector offering foreign currency, registering net revenues of USD 7,568 million, largely explained by its result under the heading “Goods” (See Table I.2). In turn, the “Real Sector excluding Oilseeds and Cereals” recorded net sales of USD 160 million, mainly explained by net income from “Debt, FDI, portfolio and other operations”, partially offset by expenditures for “Services and other currents”. On the other hand, “Individuals” registered net outflows of USD 6,857 million, mainly due to net purchases of banknotes and foreign currency without specific purposes for USD 6,890 million.

It should be noted that part of the funds acquired and registered in the banknote account are deposited in local accounts or are later used to cancel purchases with cards in foreign currency and do not constitute the formation of foreign assets. Similarly, as for foreign currency outflows, they can be partly used to cancel foreign liabilities (for example, for payments of foreign commercial and financial debt or profits and dividends).

In terms of the foreign exchange balance, current account operations registered a surplus of USD 5,510 million in September, explained by the net income of the “Goods” and “Secondary income” accounts of USD 7,003 million and USD 11 million, partially offset by the net outflows in the “Services” and “Primary income” accounts of USD 1,001 million and USD 504 million. respectively.

In turn, the foreign exchange financial account was in deficit of USD 5,587 million in September.
This result was explained by the deficits of the “Non-Financial Private Sector” for USD 5,263 million, the “Financial Sector” for USD 1,688 million and the “National Government and BCRA” for USD 852 million, partially offset by the net income of “Other Net Movements” for USD 2,215 million.

The BCRA’s international reserves increased by USD 387 million in September, ending the month at a level of USD 40,374 million. This result was mainly explained by the deposit of foreign currency purchases in the foreign exchange market by the National Treasury for USD 1,650 million, by the increase in the price in US dollars of the assets that make up the reserves by USD 454 million and by the increase in the foreign currency holdings of the entities in the BCRA by USD 453 million. The aforementioned movements were partially offset by the settlements of net sales of the BCRA in the foreign exchange market for USD 1,110 million, for the net outflows of capital and interest on loans from international organizations (excluding the IMF) for USD 759 million, for the net cancellation of principal and interest on public securities for USD 161 million and for the net payments made by the BCRA through the Currency Payment System Local (SML) for USD 78 million.