BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina's central bank announced on Friday that it will ease its foreign exchange market controls, allowing the peso to
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s central bank announced on Friday that it will ease its foreign exchange market controls, allowing the peso to freely fluctuate within a moving band of between 1,000 and 1,400 pesos per dollar.
The move tears down Argentina’s strict capital controls that have largely been in place for nearly six years. The peso closed at 1,074 per dollar on Friday.
Argentina will also eliminate the so-called “dollar clamp” that restricted access to foreign currency, the central bank said in a statement.
“As of Monday, we will be able to put an end to the foreign exchange restrictions, which were imposed in 2019 and which limit the normal functioning of the economy,” Economy Ministry Luis Caputo said at a press conference.
The measures will also eliminate foreign exchange restrictions for individuals and allow the distribution of profits to foreign shareholders from the financial year beginning in 2025, according to the central bank.
The announcement came ahead of an expected $20 billion deal with the International Monetary Fund.
Caputo said the IMF agreement will have an initial disbursement of $12 billion and will be used to recapitalize Argentina’s central bank.
The new foreign exchange landscape will allow investments to start coming in, which will “generate the consolidation of the growth that we are already seeing,” Caputo said.
(Reporting by Maximilian Heath, Adam Jourdan and Anthony Esposito; Editing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Rosalba O’Brien)
By Maximilian Heath and Anthony Esposito
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