Sunday, September 20, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
ECONOMY-ARGENTINA: Banks Return Small Savers’ Devalued Deposits
Marcela Valente
- Argentine banks began Tuesday to allow withdrawals from fixed-term accounts frozen last December, but it is a belated restitution paid in the local currency, the peso, and will do little to rebuild the savers’ trust.
The thawing of the bank accounts, announced Sep 10 by the Eduardo Duhalde government, affects approximately 700,000 savers with small holdings, or 65 percent of those who were caught by the so-called "corralito" (little fence).
But they represent just five percent of the money that has been locked in the banks for the last 10 months.
The government decree entered into force Tuesday, ordering the banks to make fixed-term deposits available to savers.
Customers may withdraw up to 7,000 pesos (approximately 1,900 dollars), plus interest accumulated since December, when the "convertibility" regime was still in place, pegging the peso at one-to-one with the dollar.
In spite of the ceiling set by the government, some 25 banks offered to boost the availability to 10,000 pesos (2,700 dollars) per account.
The bank freeze imposed in early December 2001 by then-minister of economy Domingo Cavallo was followed by a dramatic depreciation of the peso, begun when Duhalde lifted the convertibility plan.
Tuesday, the exchange rate for the Argentine peso was more than 3.7 per dollar.
Duhalde was sworn in as president by Congress on Jan 1, in the wake of the political and economic chaos that toppled his predecessor Fernando de la Rúa. The new president did not wait long to make changes.
Not only did his administration put an end to the 10-year-old system that kept the peso tied to the dollar, it also ordered the conversion of dollar bank accounts to pesos, at an exchange of 1.4 pesos per dollar.
As a result, an individual who had 10,000 dollars in the bank last December suffered an abrupt depreciation of capital. The 14,000 pesos resulting from the January "pesification" process would today buy less than 3,800 dollars.
"Thieves! Give us our money back!" reads the graffiti painted on the corrugated metal covering the façades of bank buildings in downtown Buenos Aires, which have proven to need their protective shells.
"The banks don’t have clients. They have victims," a woman told IPS as she left a bank after transferring her money from a fixed- term account to a savings account with the same institution.
The annual cost of keeping a savings account rose from 30 pesos (eight dollars today) in 2001 to 60 pesos (16 dollars) this year, said the woman, indignant, as she reviewed her receipts.
The atmosphere inside the banks Tuesday was markedly different from what it was a year ago, before the crisis, when the banking industry still offered all sorts of guarantees for retaining the savers’ deposits.
"I am scared. I am in a situation of enormous stress," a manager at the state-run Banco Provincia de Buenos Aires, told IPS.
"People want to kill me, they threaten me. Once a client grabbed the front of my shirt and shouted insults and shook me until a guard came and calmed him down. But it is exhausting, and the worst is that we have fewer and fewer staff," said the manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The bank employees union reports that in the last 10 months more than 9,000 people in the sector have been laid off, and even larger cuts are expected.
By the time the crisis begins to turn around, the number of employees in Argentina’s banking industry will have plummeted from 104,000 last December to some 50,000, predict labour experts.
Alfredo Atanasof, Duhalde’s Cabinet chief, stated that Tuesday was a "very important day" for the Argentine people because "it marks the beginning of the recovery of the financial system" and involves "nearly 70 percent of savers."
Nevertheless, the lifting of the freeze after 10 months of restrictions on cash withdrawals was not welcomed by all.
"The banks could return dollars, but they don’t because they are immoral and dishonest. And the government is an accomplice because instead of standing by the depositors, it is backing the financial corporations," Nito Artaza, a comic actor who has turned into a leader of the savers’ movement, said Tuesday.
Artaza, whose money was frozen by the measures imposed in December, began participating in the protests and later became their main promoter.
To date, he has met with government officials, bank executives and representatives of multilateral credit organisations like the International Monetary Fund.
Artaza was also successful in getting the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to accept a claim against the government for the violation of property rights, which are protected by the Argentine constitution.
The IACHR has scheduled an Oct 18 hearing in Washington, convening representatives of the Duhalde government and of the affected savers, to try for a negotiated way out of the crisis.
Furthermore, Artaza has launched legal action in the United States and Spain against the head offices of the banks with affiliates in Argentina, demanding that they take responsibility for the losses suffered by their clients.
The lawsuits are justified by the advertising of these entities, which prior to the crisis assured the Argentine consumers of their international backing.
"We recommended that the government establish in the decree that deposits returned of up to 7,000 pesos should be paid in the currency of the account’s origin, but the government didn’t listen," complained the comedian.
"Each person should let their bank know in a letter that they will continue to demand full payment," he urged.
Savers in Argentina have seen their accounts in dollars converted into pesos, suffered restrictions on withdrawals, and have been showered with offers to have their money returned in quotas or in bonds, in pesos or dollars, with timeframes as long as 11 years.
Attorney Susana Marín and publicist Martín Alonso have been married four years and live in a two-room apartment. When the peso was equal to the dollar, they had saved 55,000 dollars to buy a larger home and to have a child.
But their dream was put on hold by the bank "corralito".
Marín presented a petition for legal protection in April, as some 200,000 other savers have done, but has not received a response from the courts.
If she had withdrawn the money from her bank account before the freeze, it would today total 202,000 pesos. But because of the obligatory conversion in January at the 1.4 exchange, the sum is just 77,000 pesos (less than 21,000 dollars).
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ECONOMY-ARGENTINA: Banks Return Small Savers’ Devalued Deposits
Marcela Valente
- Argentine banks began Tuesday to allow withdrawals from fixed-term accounts frozen last December, but it is a belated restitution paid in the local currency, the peso, and will do little to rebuild the savers’ trust.
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