Argentina launches maximum value bill in the face of inflation of almost 300%

Buenos Aires. Argentina put into circulation this Tuesday a 10 thousand pesos ($11) bill that will be the largest denomination, surpassing the 2 thousand pesos ($2.20) bill launched a year ago in response to the country’s high inflation and which precedes a 20 thousand bill scheduled for the end of the year.

“The Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) puts into circulation the new 10 thousand peso bill, which will be progressively distributed starting today through the network of bank branches and ATMs throughout the country,” the bank announced in a statement. BCRA, which seeks to facilitate transactions and reduce the “acquisition costs of finished banknotes.”

Argentina has been going through an economic crisis for years that combines a restriction on external credit, rampant inflation that depreciates the currency – in March 2024 it reached 287 percent year-on-year – and a poverty rate of 42 percent of the population in December, according to the latest official data, but higher than 57 percent since December according to the local Catholic University.

Inflation and constant currency devaluations in recent years have made current banknotes lose value and made it difficult for citizens, who must carry large amounts of currency with them. This led previous governments to remove the lowest bills from circulation: the two, five and 10 pesos.

The new 10 thousand pesos bill has as its main image that of Manuel Belgrano (1770-1820), creator of the Argentine flag and commander of the so-called Army of the North during the Argentine war of independence at the beginning of the 19th century.

The bill will lead the value podium for a short time, since the BCRA announced that the last quarter of the year will see the launch of the 20 thousand bill.

Just last year the predecessor government of former President Alberto Fernández had to double the value of the highest bill in circulation – then one thousand pesos (4 dollars at the exchange rate at that time) – to date.

The issuance of new high-denomination banknotes is repeated history in Argentina: in the last 140 years it changed the name of its currency five times and had a paper currency of 1,000,000 pesos in the 1980s during the last dictatorship. civic-military (1976-83), in the midst of a hyperinflationary context.