Banks already limit deposits in banknotes of $100 and $200 to 15%

Backpacks, suitcases, consortium bags, cardboard boxes.Discussions with banks managers, reasonable but incomprehensible explanations.Calculations hurried not to lose money and, the worst, provisions that apply in fact, without being written anywhere.

The overabundance of low nomination tickets, especially those of 100 pesos, shoot crazy days in companies and banks.Managing millions of pesos in "physical" - as it is called - has become true torture for the real economy that modifies uses and customs in transactions.

The amount of existing paper currency in an inflationary context has led, for example, that some private banks put limits to deposits in pesos with small tickets.There is talk of 15% of the total deposit, no more.

“Es que ya no entran en ningún lado, a punto tal que buena parte del físico queda afuera de la bóveda”, confesó a La Voz un alto ejecutivo de una entidad bancaria privada que, por razones obvias, pidió reserva de fuente. “Claro que para que les rinda, si quisieran robarlo, deberían venir con dos camiones, de lo contrario se llevarían chauchas”, ironizó el interlocutor.

One million pesos with tickets that carry the face of Julio Argentino Roca, Eva Perón or the Andean deer, involves 100 bundles of 100 bills.The daily collection of certain retail areas can quietly overcome that volume.

Or to speak when activities that concentrate the collection for administrative reasons are scale.It is a rain of tickets that must be controlled, count, tie and stoker.Half of the total number of tickets circulating in the country are 100 pesos.

But once all those actions that also imply a provision of personnel and logistics, another problem appears: several banks of the Córdoba Square (and it is supposed to also put a limit to the deposits with these tickets.Some dare to collect a commission of one or two percent, depending on the relationship they have with the client, to receive them.

Everyday bustle

“With the bank with which we work we reach an agreement so that they do not charge us commission, they tell us that they have no means to handle so many bills.In some cases we agree with the treasurers, we leave the backpacks or bags to count when they have time and accredit the deposit, ”a businessman with dozens of points of sale told this medium.

According to this source, the low existence of 500 and 1,000 pesos bills complicates the panorama."Until now it is a" renegade ", we can only deposit at a branch because in the rest we did not get any agreement," he said.

Aun cuando existe una estrategia para desincentivar el uso de billetes por parte de los consumidores para pasar a medios de pagos electrónicos, según datos del mercado cordobés a los que accedió La Voz, el empleo de papel moneda creció a razón del 12% en 2021. “Está muy por debajo de la inflación, pero sigue creciendo y ocasiona un costo mover esa plata”, dijo un gerente.

Logistics

One of the reasons is that the prices of transfers do not follow the variables of the financial system but of real inflation.For example, those who go above flow vehicles are affiliated with the truck drivers.As of June of last year, the joint agreement implied a rise of 45%, but in December the payment of an additional bonus of 48 thousand pesos in four installments was agreed.

These updates go directly to the cost of the service provided by two large companies with deployment throughout the country, Brinks and Prosegur.Others, smaller, mobilize in a regional level but also follow the large ones with their prices.

How much does it cost to mobilize a flow truck?The calculation is complex because different situations coexist.There are international banks that, for example, have agreements with the same company for all countries where they are and pay less.Tours and insurance also affect.

However, with large margins of difference, that cost is between 0.8 and one percent of the total amount transported.It is not the same to carry a truck from this capital to an interior city, to move within the same city to a branch.To that percentage is added about 150 pesos per kilometer traveled.

Another point is how much money enters a truck.There, the bill of the tickets is size.If they are 500 or 1,000, they can go to 200 million pesos.It is the theory, in practice they can travel 10, 50 or 100 million.

"Sending a truck full of 100 bills is to work at a loss," they insist on the banks to justify the attempt to receive a commission or limit the discharge of paper money by their customers.

Extrabancary collectors who charge third -party services - staple or easy payment - are also added complications with small tickets."It is not their own effective, they raise, keep and transfer," said Martín R., head of a mouth of collections.

Not even the BCRA wants them

The relationship between banks and the Central Bank is also tension for this reason.He stopped receiving the 100 bills for deposits and, given the excess, authorized the banks to carry out interbank ticket custody (CIB).That is, one entity passes tickets to another under audit of the monetary authority.

"But banks make custody in large tickets, not in boys," said another manager specialized in the subject.

At some point there were entities that tried agreements to pass the boys tickets to banks such as the Nation and Córdoba, who pay retirement and pensions, but given the paper overflow the action stopped.

When a bank has no dispatch of large amounts of payments per window, such as the cases of Santander, Macro or Galicia, sending them to the BCRA in Buenos Aires is all cost.Placing them at ATMs is also unfeasible.An average extraction currently rounds 15 thousand pesos, such as the mouthpiece of the device has a limit of 40 tickets, would imply four operations to reach that amount with a high replacement rate.They prefer to put 500 and 1,000 bills, and the rest try to channel them through the physical cashier which sometimes involves another pull with customers in the windows.

An alternative in the case of deposits would go through the 20% lace that the Central Bank is obliged and the rest invest it, for example, in passes or Leliqs.Save tickets means assuming the loss of that potential profitability."If I keep one billion pesos in 100 bills, in the year I resigned 370 million," calculates a treasurer.But doing so would also imply facing hidden costs such as municipal rates to financial returns.In Córdoba capital it is 5% plus an extra fund that adds 2.5%: 7.5% in total.

Undoubtedly, a solution for these dilemmas would happen because the government provides for the printing of greater denomination tickets.There was talk of a 5,000 pesos with the image of Ramón Carrillo or Rosario Vera Peñaloza.But doing so would imply openly recognize inflationary collapse.

$ 5,000 and $ 10,000 tickets are not yet arrived

On numerous occasions they were managed transcended, but no one knows precisely what is currently the possibility that the government instructs the Central Bank to proceed to the market for 5,000 and 10,000 pesos tickets.

On the monetary authority page, there are 13 tickets in circulation with nomination of 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 pesos.Some with the same value, such as 50 and 100 pesos, even if they have different illustrations and series.

At prices on Monday, the largest ticket that circulates in Argentina, the $ 1,000, equals $ 9.12 or $ 4.48 parallel.

In August of last year, Pablo Blanco, a senator of together for the change, presented a project to advance in the issuance of 5,000 and 10,000 pesos bills.In facts, what he did was accelerate the emission, but that of 1,000 pesos.

Political times also condition an exit to the problem.

Ticket issuance: When to do it

Within the framework of a comprehensive economic plan, such as the one requested by the IMF and the opposition, include the issuance of greater denomination tickets would not disappoint.In fact, several economic plans throughout Argentine history were born accompanied by a new currency, such as the Southern Plan and the convertibility plan.

Doing it outside that context and without controls could be complicated, since the total amount of the emission without absorbing existing weights can generate economic and political tensions.

Meanwhile, of that idea of issuing a 5,000 -peso ticket, for now there has only been the design with the figures of the government's favorite sanitary, Ramón Carrillo, and Rioja Rosario Vera Peñaloza's educator and pedagogue.