Argentina halts banknote printing as Milei turns to Chinese suppliers

[MilHojas]

Argentina halts banknote printing as Milei turns to Chinese suppliers

The government has also decided to intervene in the national mint for 180 days, citing serious infrastructure deficiencies, obsolete machinery, and a debt of nearly $400 million

english.elpais.com

Earlier this month, the Milei administration announced a restructuring of the Casa de Moneda. On Monday, the Central Bank of the Republic (BCRA) terminated its contracts with the company, citing high costs, non-compliance, and delays in the provision of 1,000 and 2,000 peso bills ...

 

[Ries]

Nothing spells "advanced economy" quite like having to import your own money...
Milei is driven solely by imaginary ideological systems that have never worked in the real world.
This will not end well.
Although, after he scraps the entire infrastructure to print paper money, when the next administration has to retool and build a new mint, it will have the advantage of being modern and state of the art, and thus much less prone to counterfeits..

 

[dlish]

thus much less prone to counterfeits

Who is counterfeiting peso!?! May as well counterfeit dollars

 

[Ries]

Who is counterfeiting peso!?! May as well counterfeit dollars

Personally I have never had a problem but this very site has warnings going back over the years about cab drivers and stores giving phony change. The fact remains that depending on china for your money is stupidity. What if they raise the printing price above face value?

 

[Redpossum]

But but but, they're COMMUNISTS!

How can this guy be so rigidly doctrinaire on one issue, yet go 180 degrees against doctrine and past statement on the next issue?

 

[Ries]

I am wondering what other wasteful government departments he will outsource to china.
The Navy, certainly, is a candidate. Time share usage of submarines, complete with crew, would be much cheaper.
Simply changing the name of AFIP sounds lazy to me- I am sure the chinese would be happy to sell him call center service instead.
But why stop with China- other great providers might include-
Trump University instead of UBA. Online, only, of course.
Casa Rosada would be a great location for Kansas, and they would pay rent.

 

[antipodean]

Nothing spells "advanced economy" quite like having to import your own money...

Tell it to "advanced economies" like Norway, Denmark, New Zealand amongst others.

Nor is it the first time an Argentine government (or one of an advanced economy) imports its own money... if it was not a thing then the Royal Canadian Mint wouldn't have been producing currency for 73 countries all these years not to mention their various competitors in the world of bank note printing for export.

 

[LuckyLuke]

The intrinsic value of paper notes, is at the end of the day just paper. It's not like Argentina is sending all it's gold bullion to China to smelt into coins. I don't see what the national risk is here...

 

[sergio]

Personally I have never had a problem but this very site has warnings going back over the years about cab drivers and stores giving phony change. The fact remains that depending on china for your money is stupidity. What if they raise the printing price above face value?

I thought he said the state would NOT trade with China!

 

[FrankPintor]

More trumped-up ideological crap. If the "Casa de la Moneda" had been able to reduce the numbers of 1000 and 2000 Peso banknotes in favour of 10000 and still non-existent 20000 Peso banknotes (and maybe even 5000 Peso ones, if anyone was thinking straight), the workload would have decreased by 5-10 times, releasing spare capacity that the institute was already planning to sell to print other countries' banknotes (at a profit).