The Government took a new measure to curb the rise of the dollar: what does it entail?

The government has ordered a new increase in bank reserves to ensure that, following this Wednesday's tender to renew $13.7 trillion , the minimum amount of pesos remains undistributed in the financial system .

The Central Bank has established that reserve requirements will increase by 2 percentage points starting today and by 3.5 points starting Monday, September 2 , with the possibility of integrating part of these amounts with the government bonds that will be auctioned that day.

The tender will be for $13.8 trillion , of which approximately $4.8 trillion is already in the hands of the Central Bank itself , which reduces the need for renewal. However, the Ministry of Economy and the monetary authority took precautionary measures against the possibility that banks might prefer to hold onto the pesos to manage their liquidity.

Tensions within the financial system have been dragging on since the elimination of the LEFI (Financial Interbank Offerings), in a scenario where the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo , and the president of the Central Bank, Santiago Bausili , are seeking to have entities direct their liquidity toward longer-term securities instead of papers maturing in one day.

For the government, the central strategy is to prevent "pesos from being left on the streets" that could be dumped into the foreign exchange market and exert pressure on the exchange rate.

In this context, the The dollar opened the week with an upward trend and closed at $1,370 at Banco Nación , just $10 below its historic record.

Bank reserves are the percentage of deposits that banks are required to immobilize in the Central Bank and which, therefore, they cannot lend or invest freely .

For example, when a customer deposits money in a bank (in a savings account, checking account, or fixed-term deposit), the institution cannot use 100% of those funds to grant loans or purchase assets. A portion is "retained" as a reserve at the Central Bank .