“Argentina’s economic outlook is becoming increasingly easy to analyse: it is more and more dependent on a single economic variable – international reserves,” states a research note by Citi, dated from early August 2013. In other words, the country's economic situation is increasingly worrying.
Gross international reserves in Latin America’s third largest country have shrunk by $5.9bn to a six-year low of $37.1bn between the end of 2012 and the beginning of August 2013, according to Citi. This is bound to get a few investors’ hearts racing; the government relies on the central bank’s reserves to service its foreign currency debt, as it still does not have access to voluntary debt markets because of unresolved issues with holdouts from its $95bn default in 2001.