ESTUDOS AVANÇADOS 23 (66), 2009 179
Panel 1 – The operation functioning
Mechanism
The exporter companies are benefi ted by a mechanism of fi nancing
called Anticipation of Foreign Exchange Contracts (Antecipação de
Contratos de Câmbio – ACC), for which they receive the value of their
exports, in Reais, in up to six months before doing them.
Discrepancy
The exporters apply that money and resources of their own funds in the
fi nancial market to get compensation for an eventual foreign exchange
discrepancy. Thus, even if the profi t with the exports decreases due to
the valorization of the Real, the companies win in the fi nancial market
and reduce their losses.
Protection
The companies use that mechanism to protect their exports, but they
were operating beyond the values associated to those exports. In
addition to that, some fi nancial operations did not have a limit of losses
in case of a depreciation of the Real.
Losses
In practical terms, they bet that the Real value would continue to
increase, but, with the oscillations in the currency caused by the
fi nancial crisis, they suffered losses.
Source: D’Amorim (2008).
Prado (2008) discusses the risk that is inherent to foreign exchange
derivatives operations, centering her analysis in the “principle of foreign exchange
lock”, a kind of range within which the exchange rate can vary without causing
losses to either party. With such mechanism, the losses for one of the parties
would happen in case the exchange rate reached and exceeded the preset
minimum or maximum. That seems to have happened to some companies that
did not expect an abrupt and accentuated depreciation of the Real, when they
locked their foreign exchange positions below 2 Reais per dollar.