LONDON/BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s international bonds and peso currency suffered on Thursday following the surprise ouster of finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo, with analysts warning of more pressure to come.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro named Ricardo Bonilla as finance minister in a Cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday, sending the peso down more than 3% in its worst day in nine months.
The currency was down 2.85% to 4,655 to the dollar in the first minutes of trading on Thursday, its lowest level in a month.
The premium demanded by investors to hold the country’s international bonds soared by 22 basis points to 431 bps, JPMorgan data showed.
Though the market was eager for Ocampo to remain in his post, the fracturing of Petro’s broad congressional coalition over a health reform proposal may clipped the president’s reformist wings.
“The dumping of finance minister Ocampo, seen as an anchor of economic stability within the cabinet, is negative news,” said Alejandro Arreaza at Barclays. “But it also reduces the tail risk of radical reforms.”
Despite the tumble on Wednesday, Colombia’s peso is in the top three emerging market currencies year to date, up over 4% since the start of 2023.
But more pressure is likely ahead.
“Bonilla has a challenging task ahead,” said Diego Pereira at JPMorgan, adding that the risk premium that had materially weighed on Colombian assets in the last three months of 2022 had narrowed in recent months thanks to an improvement in macroeconomic adjustment.
However, this adjustment was far from complete, making asset prices very vulnerable to sudden changes in risk aversion.
“Uncertainty on fiscal policy ahead and the commitment to the fiscal rule would likely again be tested by the market,” Pereira said.
(Reporting by Karin Strohecker in London and Nelson Bocanegra in Bogota; Writing by Karin Strohecker and Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Mark Porter and Jonathan Oatis)
