Summary
The BCRA once again met its monetary base (WB) target in January. The average WB stood at $1.346 billion, 1% ($12 billion) below the target and 0.7% above December.
The exchange rate was below the non-intervention zone for most of the month and the BCRA bought US$560 million. The pesos injected through these purchases added $6.8 billion to the WB’s goal for January and added $20.9 billion to the WB’s goals for the following months, to which the impact of purchases made starting in February must be added.
The performance of the foreign exchange market had as a counterpart the increase in demand for savings instruments in pesos. In particular, fixed-term deposits in pesos grew by $81.3 billion (8.4%) compared to December and accumulated a year-on-year increase of 68.6%.
The injection of liquidity associated with the purchase of foreign currency drove the decrease in the rate paid by the LELIQs, which at the end of January stood at 53.7%, 5.6 p.p. below the value recorded at the end of 2018 and 19.8 p.p. lower than the maximum reached on October 8.
The drop in the interest rates of the LELIQs was transferred to the interest rates paid on time deposits, which maintained a downward trend, more pronounced in the segment of deposits with larger amounts. The TM20 of private banks ended the month at 46%, 5.7 p.p. below the level it presented a month ago.
Loans in pesos to the private sector fell by 3.7% in real and seasonally adjusted terms. Mortgage loans showed a moderate nominal increase compared to the previous month (0.2%). Financing through this line was almost exclusively made up of those denominated in UVA, which were granted at a weighted average interest rate of 5.9%. The balance of international reserves increased by US$1,005 million in January, to US$66,811 million, driven by the BCRA’s purchases of foreign currency.
