Spotlight on Dollarizing and Dedollarizing in Latin America
Many countries in Latin America have endured years of political and economic instability, which has exacerbated the massive inequality that has characterized the societies in modern times. Most of the wealth is in the hands of the white elite, who live sophisticated lives in the large cities, eating in fancy restaurants and flying off to Miami for shopping trips. Indeed, major cities often look much like any other modern, industrialized cities, complete with cinemas, fast-food restaurants, Internet cafés, and shopping malls.
But while the rich enjoy an enviable lifestyle, the vast majority of the continent’s large indigenous population often lives in extreme poverty. While international aid programs attempt to alleviate the poverty, a lot depends on the country’s government. Corrupt governments slow down the pace of progress.
Over the past two decades, governments in Ecuador and Peru—as well as others in Latin America including Bolivia, Paraguay, Panama, El Salvador, and Uruguay—have opted to dollarize to stabilize their countries’ economies. Each country replaced its national currency with the US dollar. Each country has struggled economically despite abundant natural resources. Economic cycles in key industries, such as oil and commodities, contributed to high inflation. While the move to dollarize was not always popular domestically initially, its success has been clearly evident. In both Ecuador and Peru, dollarizing has provided a much needed benefit, although one country expects to continue aligning with the US dollar and the other hopes to move away from it.
In Ecuador, for example, a decade after dollarizing, one cannot dismiss the survival of dollarization as coincidence. Dollarization has provided Ecuador with the longest period of a stable, fully convertible currency in a century. Its foremost result has been that inflation has dropped to single digits and remained there for the first time since 1972. The stability that dollarization has provided has also helped the economy grow an average of 4.3 percent a year in real terms, fostering a drop in the poverty rate from 56 percent of the population in 1999 to 35 percent in 2008. As a result, dollarization has been popular, with polls showing that more than three-quarters of Ecuadorians approve of it.
However, this success could not protect the country from the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis and economic downturn, which led to falling remittances and declining oil revenue for Ecuador. The country “lacks a reliable political system, legal system, or investment climate. Dollarization is the only government policy that provides Ecuadorians with a trustworthy basis for earning, saving, investing, and paying.”
Source: Pedro P. Romero, “Ecuador Dollarization: Anchor in a Storm,” Latin Business Chronicle, January 23, 2009, accessed February 9, 2011,
http://www.latinbusinesschronicle.com/app/article.aspx?id=3096
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Peru first opted to dollarize in the early 1970s as a result of the high inflation, which peaked during the hyperinflation of 1988−90. “With high inflation, the U.S. dollar started to be the preferred means of payments and store of value.”
Source: Mercedes García-Escribano, “Peru: Drivers of De-dollarization,” International Monetary Fund, July 2010, accessed May 9, 2011,
http://www.bcrp.gob.pe/docs/Publicaciones/Documentos-de-Trabajo/2010/Documento-de-Trabajo-11-2010.pdf
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Dollarization was the only option to stabilize prices. A key cost of dollarizing, however, is losing monetary independence. Another cost is that the business cycle in the country is tied more closely to fluctuations in the US economy and currency. Balancing the benefits and the costs is an ongoing concern for governments.
Despite attempts to dedollarize in the 1980s, it was not until the recent decade that Peru has successfully pursued a market-driven financial dedollarization. Dedollarization occurs when a country reduces its reliance on dollarizing credit and deposit of commercial banks. In Peru, as in some other Latin American countries—such as Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay—dedollarization has been “driven by macroeconomic stability, introduction of prudential policies to better reflect currency risk (such as the management of reserve requirements), and the development of the capital market in soles” (the local Peruvian currency).
Source: Mercedes García-Escribano, “Peru: Drivers of De-dollarization, International Monetary Fund,” July 2010, accessed May 9, 2011,
http://www.bcrp.gob.pe/docs/Publicaciones/Documentos-de-Trabajo/2010/Documento-de-Trabajo-11-2010.pdf
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Dedollarizing is still a relatively recent phenomenon, and economists are still trying to understand the implications and impact on businesses and the local economy in each country. What is clear is that governments view dedollarizing as one more tool toward having greater control over their economies.
KEY TAKEAWAYs
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The international monetary system had many informal and formal stages. For more than one hundred years, the gold standard provided a stable means for countries to exchange their currencies and facilitate trade. With the Great Depression, the gold standard collapsed and gradually gave way to the Bretton Woods system.
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The Bretton Woods system established a new monetary system based on the US dollar. This system incorporated some of the disciplinary advantages of the gold system while giving countries the flexibility they needed to manage temporary economic setbacks, which had led to the fall of the gold standard.
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The Bretton Woods system lasted until 1971 and provided the longest formal mechanism for an exchange-rate system and forums for countries to cooperate on coordinating policy and navigating temporary economic crises.
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While no new formal system has replaced Bretton Woods, some of its key elements have endured, including a modified managed float of foreign exchange, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank—although each has evolved to meet changing world conditions.
EXERCISES
(AACSB: Reflective Thinking, Analytical Skills)
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What is the international monetary system?
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What was the gold standard, and why did it collapse?
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What was Bretton Woods, and why did it collapse?
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What is the current system of exchange rates?