By Hernán Nessi
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 18 (Reuters) – The Argentine Commercial Exchange (ICA) would have recorded a positive balance of 550 million dollars in the last month of 2021, mainly explained by a greater rebound in imports, according to the median of a survey of Reuters.
Large disparities in estimates among eight local analysts also yielded an average surplus of $830 million for December’s ICA.
“Despite the lower seasonality of December, the expectations of a devaluation towards the summer or an increase in import restrictions would have led to a significant rebound in imports compared to December 2020,” said Isaías Marini, economist at the Econviews consultancy.
For its part, “exports had a heterogeneous performance, and were affected by the drop in exports from the automotive sector,” he added.
The significant difference between the estimates of the surveyed analysts ranged from a minimum surplus of 60 million dollars to a maximum of 2,380 million dollars for the ICA of the last month of 2021.
For Milagros Suardi, economist at EcoGo, the South American country would close 2021 “with a trade surplus close to 14.3 billion dollars.”
The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC), according to its publication schedule, will release the official trade balance data for the last month of 2021 on Thursday afternoon. (Reporting by Hernán Nessi; Editing by Walter Bianchi)
