por admin » Vie Oct 26, 2012 8:23 am
Para fin de anio las pensiones de Peru podran invertir mas en el extranjero. Buenas noticias.
Peru Seeks Higher Foreign Limits for Pension Funds by Year End
By Bill Faries and John Quigley - Oct 26, 2012 12:00 AM ET
Peru’s central bank will probably raise the limit on pension fund investments abroad by year end as part of measures to fight an appreciation of the sol, central bank President Julio Velarde said.
The monetary authority is awaiting a written statement on the restrictions from the pension regulator before moving forward, Velarde said in an interview in Miami yesterday. That opinion should be coming “in the next few weeks,” he added. The move, which could ease pressure on the sol, comes after the currency reached a 15-year high of 2.5780 per dollar on Oct. 22.
Julio Velarde, president of the central bank of Peru, attends the Group of 24 meeting during the IMF-World Bank spring meeting in Washington, D.C. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
.“We don’t want the currency to appreciate too much outside the fundamentals” of the economy, Velarde said before the start of a forum sponsored by Latin Trade magazine. “We’re always concerned that if there is too much appreciation the demand for protectionism will grow.”
Peru has raised reserve requirements on dollar accounts, tightened restrictions on sales of greenbacks and boosted reserves by buying $12 billion in the currency market this year to tame the sol. Raising foreign investment restrictions for Peru’s four pension funds, which are near the 30 percent limit on their $35 billion in assets, would aid that effort, Velarde said.
“We’ve had some success over the past four years” in fighting the appreciation, Velarde said. “Peru is one of the few countries in Latin America where people are used to taking out loans in dollars so that makes monetary policy a bit more difficult.”
Currency Sales
The move to limit local banks’ U.S. currency sales in the spot market to 10 percent of their equity from 15 percent may reduce bets against the dollar, said Alonso Segura, the head of investment and strategy at Banco de Credito del Peru (CREDITC1) in Lima. The sol has gained 17 percent in the past five years, the best performance among major Latin American currencies.
“It may limit some speculative flows but the majority of flows are long term,” Segura said in a phone interview yesterday.
The measure also seeks to limit banks’ dollar sales in the forwards market to 20 percent of their equity or 300 million soles ($116 million), whichever is greater, according to an Oct. 19 statement on the website of the Superintendency of Banking, Insurance and Pension Fund Administrators.
Surging Reserves
Under Velarde’s tenure, annual inflation has averaged 3.34 percent with economic growth of 6.9 percent, while bank loans have increased 180 percent to 139 billion soles, fueled by booming private investment and consumer demand. He’s quadrupled the country’s foreign reserves to a record $62 billion.
The 60-year-old Velarde, who studied economics at Universidad del Pacifico and Brown University, took office in 2006 and was re-appointed to a second five-year term last year by President Ollanta Humala.
Fueled by growing domestic demand, construction and exports of copper and gold, Peru’s economy probably grew 6.5 percent in the third quarter, Velarde said. Growth should average about 6 percent per year over the next four to five years.
“There are so many investment projects going forward and there’s so much optimism in the business community,” Velarde said.