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Reasons why Mexico's FX commission will keep intervention parameters unchanged

Under Mexico's current market conditions, the FX commission will keep the amount and parameters of its passive FX interventions unchanged next September 30.

According to Barclays the resaons are:

  • MXN is far from cheap and depreciation has been in line with its EM peers. Although MXN has depreciated almost 13% YTD versus the USD, in real and multilateral terms it has only weakened 6%. On top of that, MXN ranks as only the 21st cheapest currency out of 34 in risk adjusted terms*.

  • There are no signs of stress in the FX market. Despite recent MXN weakness being comparable (in size) to other episodes where financial stress was high, this time around financial conditions are quite different. USDMXN in annualized terms (adjusting by time) has "only" moved 27% since mid-2014 compared to 115% in the great recession.

  • FX pass-through has been limited and it has decreased over time. FX depreciation has only been reflected in higher durable goods prices, with no second-round effects in other non-tradable CPI components, suggesting that the ultimate effect of this depreciation should be only a change in relative prices, consistent with the consolidation of improved inflation dynamics in Mexico over the past years. 

  • Increasing the amount of intervention is ruled out as the FX commission would want to save some bullets in case things get worse. While Banxico will be able to inject liquidity and keep an orderly move in MXN with 253bn, the pace of intervention is not negligible and the FX commission will want to keep some in reserve in case things get worse. At the current pace, international reserves are falling around 3.2bn each month.

  • Market Data
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