BOGOTA, Oct 26 (Reuters) – Colombia’s Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo has asked the country’s central bank to discuss liquidity in futures markets at its monthly meeting this Friday, he said on Wednesday, at a time when the local currency and national debt experienced turbulence from domestic insecurity.
On Monday, the Colombian peso hit a record low after depreciating 25.3% for the year amid a crisis of confidence caused by comments by President Gustavo Petro on certain economic policies, including a proposed tax reform, a ban on new oil exploration and proposals on capital controls.
Although the currency corrected on Wednesday, rising 1.83% against the dollar to 4,884.06, analysts say local liquidity has fallen amid global economic uncertainty.
“There’s an issue that I’ve asked the (central) bank for us to discuss on Friday about futures markets, about how liquid or not these futures markets are,” Ocampo told reporters.
In 2020, during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Central Bank of Colombia took extraordinary measures to boost liquidity, such as: B. Forex hedging via auctions for the sale of dollars through forward contracts or “swaps”.
Ocampo, who sits on the bank’s seven-member board, ruled out direct intervention in the foreign exchange market by selling dollars from international reserves to stem the peso’s depreciation, as Chile did recently.
In a recent Reuters poll, 12 out of 14 analysts expect the central bank to hike interest rates by 100 basis points to 11% on Friday. One of the analysts forecast a rise of 75 basis points and another forecast a rise of 50 basis points.
Reporting by Carlos Vargas and Nelson Bocanegra; writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Chris Reese
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