Banking in Argentina, continued

Daniel Davies dsquared at al-islam.com
Thu Nov 7 01:26:55 PST 2002


Just to set down a few details about the Argentine banking system, for anyone who cares. Under the corralito regime:

1. You can make interaccount transfers between banks in the Argentine system 2. You can make payments directly from your account using a debit card. 3. You can settle a credit card bill, and can carry debit balances on your credit card for a short while 4. You can withdraw up to $1200/month cash from an ATM 5. Since the beginning of October, you can close down a fixed-term deposit with less than 13,500 pesos and get your cash back. Very few savers have actually chosen to do this.

This is not anything that I would willingly swap for the convenience of my own bank, but it isn't a collapsed system. It's possible for businesses to get short-term credit for export finance and invoice factoring; it isn't possible to get term loans, but term loans aren't usually that big a factor for small businesses. The banking sector in Argentina is down, but it's not out and, mainly thanks to having been extremely well capitalised before the crisis, it's not bust yet.

dd

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