The arrival of foreign resources, to comply with the payment of taxes that expired on September 30th, filled the banks’ windows with dollars, which registered a surplus that was reflected in a decrease in the wholesale price of the currency.
According to data from the Central Bank, during the first 28 days of last month, exchange intermediaries received $60 million more than they sold, as a result of the quarterly tax payment.
Throughout this period, which extended from September 6th to 29th, the Foreign Currency market (Monex) marked a fall of around ¢7,5.
On the contrary, the first day of October started with a slight rebound of 90 cents.
For economist Melvin Garita, it was the excess of resources that pushed the exchange rate down, which is nothing new for a quarterly closing. However, since September 2015 the exchange rate of Monex had not closed below the moving averages of 50 and 100 sessions, just as it did on September 26th.
The evolution of the coming days will determine if we are facing a change in the trend that began at the end of the first half of 2016. The way the Central Bank makes purchases for the Non-Banking Public Sector -such as ICE and RECOPE- will be key in enabling this eventual change of trend,”
said Garita.
The exchange rate of the dollar closed the week at ¢572, after reaching a maximum value of ¢579.6 during the first week of September. During this period, the value of the colon grew by 1.3% against the dollar.
Adriana Rodríguez, an analyst at Scotiabank, commented that since mid-September, higher selling pressure of dollars was perceived in the trading sessions, and therefore, the exchange rate subsided.
This occurred after an increase in interest rates in colones, the incentives to dollarize savings diminished. Until then that had been the main cause of the deterioration in the exchange rate.
Another reason is that many people prefer to wait for year-end seasonality to buy foreign exchange, which is a period in which the exchange rate historically declines in the face of sharp increases in dollar supply, usually between October and the first half of December.
Analysts do not rule out currency depreciation towards the end of the year.