This is the price the dollar should have without the ‘Colombia factor’

Without the influence of Colombian economic and political factors, the Representative Market Rate (TRM), the official price of the dollar, could be about $300 lower.

(Colombian economy: how convenient would it be to dollarize it?).

After six days of continuous rises to record levels, the dollar in the market between banks fell, so today the TRM stands at $4,948.14. The interbank dollar closed at $4,975, after opening trades at $4,990, the daily high. The minimum price of the dollar in the market was $4,916.

The devaluation of the peso is 24.28% so far this year and 31.25% in the last 12 months.

Analysts say that the changes to the tax reform and the wait for a new decision to raise interest rates at the hands of the Banco de la República generated a climate of less volatility.

Equally, a trading volume of US$1,261 million was presented, above the previous sessions. For Edgar Jiménez, a finance professor at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, 30% of Colombian economic and political factors could have been explaining this year’s devaluation of the local currency compared to 70% of the international situation, dominated by the rise in interest rates by the Federal Reserve in the United States, global inflation and the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

(Why the dollar is the most powerful currency, although it is not the most expensive).

Thus, of a devaluation close to 25% that the peso registered since January, almost eight percentage points would be the responsibility of the internal factor and 17 points for international phenomena.

Under that consideration, according to the academic, the price of the currency could be around $4,650, a figure that was registered two weeks ago, a figure that is not too low either, he said.

Camilo Pérez, head of economic research at Banco de Bogotá, considers that “according to the studies to understand the issue, excluding the international issue, we have that the price of the dollar could be between $250 and $350 pesos below due to the Colombia factor, that is, due to uncertainty and context.

“Proportionally, the rate should be between 5% and 7% lower without this local context,” he said.

For his part, Munir Jalil, head of Economic Research for the Andean Region of BTG Pactual, says that an important element that plays against the peso is the current account deficit that “has been widening and an additional degeneration is observed” .

And to add to this he said, the trade deficit in August has also been widening as imports were US$7.3 billion, “a figure that makes the depreciation of the peso logical.”

In addition, with a growth of the economy of 8.6% “it is necessary to have imports because these serve to make GDP”.

He said that during part of this year there was a positive relationship and there was not so much depreciation of the peso.

He warned that in the last two weeks, from the idiosyncratic point of view, a bad communications strategy was generated by the Government, since two of four forces were questioned: oil revenues, when with declarations the sector is questioned forward and that makes a dent in foreign investors and the unfortunate messages from the government, together with the possibility of charging taxes on portfolio investments, which discourages the purchase of paper. “If there are other countries where they don’t charge at the exit, those capitals don’t come,” said Jalil.

The analyst points out that in the conclusions of the IMF meetings in Washington in recent days it was said that confidence in Colombia was being lost.

Apparently, according to Munir Jalil, that feeling led to the conclusion that the game was played favorably towards Brazil. “It is not a market persecution of leftist governments but of discourse,” he pointed out.

BRIEFCASE