It´s like ten thousand pesos when all you want is a dollar

As a footnote to the Bolivian visa story, it also turns out it is very difficult (impossible?) to get dollars in Northern Argentina.

The Bolivian government requires payment in dollars. So if you want a visa you´re going to need to change pesos into greenbacks.

But where?

Salta, where the consulate is located, is a city of about a half million people in Northern Argentina.  It´s on the main transportation routes north to Bolivia, and West to Chile.  It has dozens of banks and cambio offices.

But none of them can change pesos to dollars.

Dollars to pesos?  Yes.  But not the reverse.  Why?  ¨Because we don´t have any.¨

Why they don´t have any is a little bit of a mystery.

Firstly, presumably there is some steady demand for dollars in a city of half a million people with tourism and international trade.  I´m presumably not the first person to ask for dollars.

As for supply, there are lots of tourists.  These tourists probably change many more dollars into pesos than the reverse.

Maybe I just visited a few that happened to run out?  It seems unlikely, since some of these banks and cambios are large chains with offices around the country.  Businesses that big likely have the infrastructure to manage inventory and move dollars to where they´re needed.

So what´s the cause?  Is the peso overvalued, so people change as much as they can into dollars?  Is the sale of dollars to individuals prohibited?  Is the supply of dollars limited because of exchange controls?

My specific issue was resolved when I explained that I wanted dollars to pay for a Bolivian visa.  For this, the Banco De La Nacion Argentina had dollars.

This one is still unresolved, but it seems there are a number of controls around foreign exchange in Argentina.  They make life unnaturally complicated, so folks have had to figure out a way to get around the controls to get things done.  Here is some color from an expat living in BA...

http://expat-argentina.blogspot.com/2006/01/bringing-money-into-argentina.html

There is no problem bringing money into the country. If you're a legal resident you can transfer money to your bank account. The problem is that property here is priced in dollars and that's what people are usually bringing the money in for.

This presents a dilemma. The Argentina Central Bank converts all incoming wires into pesos. You can't wire-in dollars. That means when you convert the pesos back to dollars, you've lost 7-10% of your money, depending on what rates you get. That's a huge sum of money to lose on a wire transfer. To further complicate matters, the central bank sometimes withholds 30% of the amount of the transfer for a year, to make sure you are not a speculator.

There are various financial firms, private parties, money brokers, etc. out there that will let you do a wire transfer in dollars. They maintain a bank account in the U.S. and let you make a transfer into that account. After receiving the sum in the U.S., they give you cash in a bag here in Argentina.

Even though the financial firm you are dealing with may be a well respected legal entity here in Argentina, the operation they just carried out for you is extra-legal. The law of the land is that all transfers must go through the Central Bank. Someone told me the term for this is "blue money" -- not quite black money from drugs or something else illegal, but not exactly 100% legal either.

Despite this, virtually everyone transfers their money using one of these firms.