Argentina, In Dollar Love Affair, Agonizes Over Divorcing The Peso

Tue, September 5, 2023  USD=X  By Marc Jones, Eliana Raszewski and Rodrigo Campos

LONDON/BUENOS AIRES/NEW YORK (Reuters) - María Barro, a 65-year-old domestic worker in Buenos Aires, buys a few dollars each month with her peso salary, a hedge against Argentina's persistent inflation now running at over 100% and a steady devaluation of the little-loved local peso.

The peso currency is now in the crosshairs of the country's dark horse presidential front-runner, libertarian radical Javier Milei, who has pledged to eventually scrap the central bank and dollarize the economy, Latin America's third largest.

Milei - facing a tight three-way battle with traditional political candidates on the right and left ahead of an Oct. 22 vote - says savers like Barro underscore why Argentina should shed the peso.

"I try to buy dollars, no matter how little," said Barro, who started to buy greenbacks on parallel markets in 2022 when 2,000 pesos got her $10. Now it would get her $2.70. "Pesos go like water and every day they are worth less."

Barro supports the idea of a dollarized economy in theory, but says she doesn't like Milei's aggressive style, which involves regular expletive-laced tirades against rivals and even the Pope. She is still undecided about her vote.

Milei's dollarization plan has sharply divided opinion: his backers argue it is the solution to inflation near 115% while detractors say it an impractical idea that would sacrifice the country's ability to set interest rates, control how much money is in circulation and serve as the lender of last resort.

"The argument for dollarization is that there is no price stability and the independence of the central bank is an illusion," said Juan Napoli, a Senate candidate for Milei's Liberty Advances party.

Napoli admitted Argentina was not yet ready for full dollarization. Milei and advisers have talked about a nine-month to two-year time frame.

"It requires a great political agreement between us and also having sufficient reserves," Napoli said. The central bank's current net foreign currency reserves are deep in negative territory. "It will take a while, it won't happen immediately."

'ABSOLUTE LAST RESORT'

Dollarization has been tried elsewhere, usually either replacing the local currency with dollars at a set exchange rate, or intervening in the markets to 'peg' the local tender to the dollar. The central bank loses its monetary policy setting role, but often is kept to handle technical and administrative tasks such as reserves management and payment systems.

Argentina pegged its peso to the dollar in 1991 under the neo-liberal economic policies of President Carlos Menem and even debated full dollarization. However, it was forced to undo the peg a decade later as a major economic crisis and run on the peso sparked riots and saw the currency board collapse.

Bolivia has a dollar peg, Venezuela has a quasi-dollar driven economy, while Ecuador, El Salvador and Panama all officially use the dollar. Zimbabwe dollarized and then abandoned it, though economists estimate that 80% of its local economy remains in dollars.

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