Buenos Aires Herald 
The National Securities Commission (CNV, by its Spanish initials) has relaxed access to the capital market. With a view to the eventual elimination of currency controls, the government announced two changes to the current regulations.
“In light of the prevailing economic and financial context, and continuing with the normalization process of the capital market regarding the buying and selling of negotiable securities with settlement in foreign currency, the regulations previously issued by the CNV are being readjusted, temporarily,” the agency explained in an official statement.
The limitation on processing or settling sales of negotiable securities with settlement in foreign currency — in both local and foreign jurisdictions — is being relaxed when clients hold, in foreign currency, long positions in repos or any type of financing through capital market operations.
This measure was initially taken in May 2023, when the previous government prevented brokerage firms from processing CCL or MEP operations for clients with repos, regardless of the settlement currency. At the time, the measure aimed to prevent investors from leveraging repos to acquire pesos and then buy financial dollars.
The second change relates to the scheduling regime. The requirement for a five-day advance notice for transactions over AR$200 million (US$203,355 at the official rate, US$167,392 at the MEP rate) for residents, and for transactions in general for non-residents, has been eliminated. The president of the CNV, Roberto E. Silva, emphasized that “efforts are being made daily to lift restrictions in the capital market” and that “it is very important for this board to remove the obstacles that still exist in operations.”
Lifting currency controls?
The question of when the government will lift currency controls is the market’s current obsession. Signals from the economic team seem to leave market experts increasingly convinced that the controls are “here for a while.” Yet, with the new measures, the government is giving small signals that it is easing restrictions in pursuit of that goal.
A recent document from Central Bank Vice President Vladímir Werning stated that the process of reordering pesos, which Milei’s government deems essential to lift currency controls, would not be finished until 2027. A chart included in those presentations led analysts and investors to believe that the elimination of restrictions for accessing dollars had been postponed.
The presentation that Werning gave on Friday, August 23, to the US-Argentina Business Council, was published on the Central Bank’s website on Tuesday, August 27. In that document, a chart indicated that the remonetization process would conclude in December 2026. However, the document was modified the following Thursday, removing the dates contained in the chart.
Similarly, the document Werning presented at the XIX Annual Conference of Economic Studies of the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR), held on August 9 in Cartagena, Colombia, was also altered. Although both documents remain available on the Central Bank’s website, they now lack the dates that previously suggested when currency controls might be lifted.
The change in the charts, which removed the projection until December 2026, caused the market, which had interpreted that date as a potential moment for lifting currency restrictions, to reconsider its expectations.
