2 weeks Ago By Buenos Aires Herald
Argentina’s Central Bank introduced a new AR$20,000 banknote on Wednesday, with the new tender distributed in ATMs and banks. Worth US$19 at the official exchange rate and US$17.8 at the MEP rate, it is currently the largest denomination bill in the country.
The bill features Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810-1884), a politician and intellectual who influenced Argentina’s original 1853 Constitution. Alberdi is one of few Argentine historical figures cited by Javier Milei’s administration in their speeches. The new bill has “strict security measures” such as a watermark with the portrait of Alberdi and his initials, a “windowed security thread” that looks like a continuous band with the Central Bank’s acronym when the bill is held to the light, and a rendering of the National Constitution with ink that changes from magenta to green at certain angles.
A communiqué by the Central Bank added that the current administration decreased the cost from US$126 per thousand bills, as stipulated in the contract with Argentina’s Mint, to US$48 per thousand banknotes. Milei’s administration recently stopped printing banknotes in the country’s state-owned Mint, and the new bills were printed by its Chinese counterpart, the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation. “The incorporation of higher denomination banknotes and efficient monetary programming reduce the Central Bank’s direct and operating costs of the financial system as a whole,” said the communiqué, highlighting that using lower bills led to higher transportation costs.
Argentina’s history of devaluation and persistent inflation has continually led to peso banknotes losing their value daily. Until September 2023, when the AR$2,000 was put into circulation , the highest denomination bill in Argentina was AR$1,000 — US$2.7 at the official exchange rate and US$0.
7 at the MEP rate. The lowest denomination banknote still in use, issued for the first time in 1991, is worth AR$10 — US$0.009 at the official rate, and US$0.
008 at the MEP rate. During Alberto Fernández’s administration, local media reported that the Central Bank refused to issue higher denomination bills in a bid to avoid fueling inflation. According to the Central Bank, the fact that monthly inflation reached a three-year low in September debunks this theory.
.
