Chilean Peso
Currency

Introduction

Chilean peso is the national currency for the Republic of Chile and other neighboring countries such as Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina. Apart from these, the other countries having peso as their currency are Mexico, Philippines, Dominican Republic and Cuba. This currency unit is in use since 1851, but the new peso was declared official in 1975.

The dollar sign ‘$’ is as per the regulation ISO 4217 and the numeric code is 152 having CLP as the currency code.

Current Market trend

Chile has the dynamic market oriented economy, but is recently facing sluggishness. Chile was rapidly growing and was regarded to be the idol of economic reforms.

The vital factor that favored acceleration of growth was due to the foreign trade. Chile is the top exporter of copper and the currency value is based on this metal. But the economy had a total turnaround in the late 90s.

The currency of Chile started depreciating slowly and showed recovery signs. Factors focusing external shocks included Argentinean economy breakdown, fall of world commodity markets and copper value depreciation resulting in affecting the peso value adversely. Yet, the economy recovered the aftermaths.

The Chilean people have names for thousand peso banknote as ‘luka’ and the 500 peso coin as ‘quina’ and the 100 peso coin as ‘gamba’.

Structure

Chilean peso has coinage and paper currency. However, owing to high inflation, the centavo, the subunit has subsided are not in circulation. The smaller currency values are coinage and higher are paper currencies.

The reserve bank is Banco Central de Chile serving since 1925 and performs currency issuing and money circulation in the country. The official mint is Casa de Moneda for the currency coins and the coinage is in 6 denominations ranging from 1 to 500 pesos comprising of 1 peso, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 pesos. All the coins have on the front sides their value and the minting year, except for the recent 100-peso coin having a Mapuche woman image.

The coins from 1 to 50 Chilean pesos on the reverse sides have effigy of Bernardo and is engraved as ‘Republica de Chile’.

The Chilean Peso banknotes is issued in 6 denominations such as 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000 and 20000 pesos. Separate color sets are used to differentiate each note such as 500 peso is the lowest value with shades of black, green, brown, ochre and violet color, the 1000 pesos note in green, red, blue, ochre and brown colors, 2000 pesos in blue, ochre, carmine, blue and violet, 5000 pesos in brown, red, green and ochre, while 10000 pesos in blue, ochre, violet, green and reddish brown.

The 20000 pesos is in blue, green, ochre, orange and reddish brown.