Buenos Aires | Reuters — Farmers participating in Argentina’s “soy dollar” plan to boost exports have traded less than half of the soybeans they had traded at the same point during the previous plan, due to the impact of a drought, the Rosario grains exchange said on Friday.
The Argentina government launched its latest “soy dollar” plan on Monday to boost dollar inflows from soybean exports and replenish dwindling foreign exchange reserves, in a delicate economic context with annual inflation over 100 per cent.
In the first four days of the program, which offers an exchange rate of 300 pesos (C$1.86) per U.S. dollar for soybean sales — compared to the official rate of 215 pesos per U.S. dollar — producers sold 441,747 tonnes of soybeans, the exchange said.
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The figure is well below the volume sold in the first four days of the two previous “soy dollar” plans last year. In the first, last September, 3.1 million tonnes were sold. In the second, in November, sales totaled 1.1 million tonnes.
Emilce Terre, the Rosario exchange’s chief economist, attributed the disappointing numbers to a drought between early last year and March that has caused the current soybean harvest to be estimated at its worst in almost a quarter of a century.
“This latest program finds us in a very different situation (from the previous ones): Yields are the worst in 25 years. The planting area lost is at a record. There are production losses that have produced a worse-than-normal availability of soybeans,” said Terre.
While the two prior “soy dollar” plans traded on the 2021-22 soybean season, which had a harvest of 42.4 million tonnes, the current plan is trading on a harvest projected at 23 million tonnes, according to the exchange.
Last month, the head of the CIARA-CEC chamber of exporters and oilseed producers told Reuters that the sector was in crisis as its idle capacity rate was at its highest level ever due to the drought.
— Reporting for Reuters by Maximilian Heath in Buenos Aires.
