Colombian Peso Currency

Synopsis

The national currency is Colombian peso of the Republic of Colombia. This republic faced deep economic recession and Colombian peso in 1999 was devalued many times before allowing it to float freely, but has paved a steady recovery. Peso is divided into 100 centavos and the smallest denomination is 20 pesos.

The Colombian peso is divided into centavos as 100 units, but has been devalued many times and at present there are no centavo denominations. The prices are rounded to the nearest peso.

Value

The Colombian peso ISO 4217 code is COP. It is informally known as COL$. The official peso symbol is $. The exchange rate as on 5th August, 2010 is 1,830 Colombian Pesos to 1 U.S. dollar.

History

Colombian Peso has been since 1837 the Colombian currency. This currency took the place of the real @ 1 peso = 8 reales and later in 1847 it was subdivided as ten reales. In 1853, the real acquired the name decimo and the existing 100 centavos system came into use in 1819. However, the coinage and banknotes were not used until 1872 and early 1860s. Colombia then went into gold pegging to the French franc at 1 peso=5 francs until 1886.

The inflation of printing press in 1888 depreciated the exchange rates and the paper money became fixed at 100 peso. The period between 1907-1914 came with coins having denominations = to paper pesos. In 1915, the peso oro, the paper currency came into introduction and was = to the coinage peso replacing the old peso notes. In 1931, Colombian shifted to the U.S.dollar @ a.05 pesos= 1 dollar.

Colombian paper money was issued until 1993 in peso oro and since 2001 it is being debated if new peso was to be introduced worth 1000 old pesos, and is yet waiting to be decided and adopted.

Coins

Colombia’s $1000 coin is distinct such that it fell victim to fakes and merchants stopped accepting coins as payments. The denominations for coins released were $20, 50, 100,200,500 and 1000, while the bank notes denominations are $1000, 2000, 5000, 10, 000, 20,000 and 50,000.