Argentina Lifts Rates to World-High

Argentina is crashing back into the kind of financial turmoil that its market-friendly government had supposedly left behind.

The central bank raised rates to a global high of 60 percent on Thursday, a day after President Mauricio Macri shocked the country with an appeal for more cash from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It’s not clear whether either measure will be enough to halt a run on the peso, which slumped more than 15 percent as of 12:20 p.m. in Buenos Aires. It’s down more than 50 percent this year, the world’s worst emerging-market currency.

Investors are running out of faith that Macri, who came to power in December 2015 after more than a decade of budget-busting populism, can shore up the economy and bring Argentina’s fiscal and trade deficits, and its inflation rate, to manageable levels. The president had promised a smooth, gradual fix. That option may be disappearing.

“The market isn’t giving them a choice,’’ said Edwin Gutierrez, the London-based head of emerging-market sovereign debt at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “It’s forcing them to get it over with.”

The unfolding crisis in Argentina sent tremors through other emerging markets, already shaken last month by a similar—and ongoing—crash in Turkey. The lira fell 4.7 percent on Thursday, and currencies from Brazil and Mexico to South Africa also posted losses.

Argentina had some defenses in place, after securing the biggest IMF loan in history, a $50 billion credit package agreed to in June. The country also has relatively low levels of foreign-currency debt, after enduring more than a decade virtually shut out of global finance.

But it’s returned to the markets at a rapid clip under Macri, adding more than $50 billion of dollar debt in two years. Inflation has stuck above 30 percent and is set to accelerate after the peso slump. The government had aimed to reduce its overall budget deficit to 5.1 percent of GDP this year, from 6.5 percent.

The IMF says it’s considering Macri’s surprise request, made in a televised address to the country on Wednesday, for disbursements to be accelerated.

“They said this IMF agreement will be ready in a few weeks,” says Aberdeen’s Gutierrez. “Do they have a few weeks? I’m not sure they do.”

From: Bloomberg

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