BUENOS AIRES --
The Brazilian visitors gawk in wonder as they stroll past shop windows along touristy Calle Florida in the Argentine capital. The jackets, the shoes — they’re all so cheap when your purse is stuffed with black-market money.
Visitors who turn to the streets rather than the banks to swap their dollars in Argentina are getting a bonanza of extra pesos and can shop much more cheaply than at home. A leather jacket that costs $250 in Lima, Peru, can be had for about $150 in Buenos Aires.
“We find differences in the food, the perfumes, the shoes … with almost everything,” said 27-year-old Edjane Mendes, who was browsing Calle Florida with her 19-year-old friend Michele Aline. Both are Brazilians studying in Buenos Aires.
The weakening peso has led to a flood of day-trippers and other visitors from neighboring countries into Argentina, which keeps tightening its currency controls in hopes of protecting foreign reserves and reducing the flight of dollars. Argentines who feel their savings are perpetually at risk tend to save in other currencies, and in other countries, whenever they can.
Inflation now runs at about 25 percent a year, according to independent economists, while the government is trying to gradually devalue the peso by about 20 percent a year against the dollar. So with their buying power rapidly eroding, Argentines are more eager than ever to hedge their losses by swapping pesos for dollars.
The government has responded with a series of measures since late 2011 that have made it nearly impossible to legally obtain dollars at the official rate. But that has only made many Argentines more desperate.
As a result, many evade the formal financial system and buy black-market greenbacks that Argentines euphemistically call “blue dollars.” Websites now report the latest prices, giving everyone a common reference to make trades by. That means anyone entering the country with dollars can find willing buyers wherever they go in Argentina, without having to risk shady deals in dark alleys.
This blue-dollar rate briefly topped 10 pesos before the government stepped in to contain the bleeding, in part by using reserves to increase the supply of dollars circulating inside the country. On Monday, it was holding at 8 pesos, still a 50 percent premium over the official rate of 5.34.
But central-bank intervention is a tool the government can only use so often: Already this year, its foreign reserves have fallen by 11 percent to $38.6 billion.
On the streets of Argentina, the difference between living at one rate and dealing in another is so great that “it seems like living in two countries; yes, it’s like another country, somehow living underground,” Italian tourist Mario Clemente marveled as he shopped in Buenos Aires.
The phenomenon also has had a major impact in border towns and in resort areas such as the ski town of Bariloche, where Brazilian tourists are keeping hotels and ski slopes busy, largely displacing Argentines for whom the country’s high-end resorts have become more expensive than trips to the U.S. or Europe.
“In these times, it’s to their advantage if they come with dollar bills and change them here,” said Bariloche’s tourist secretary, Fabian Szewczuk.
Unlike its neighbors, Argentina has no access to foreign lending, given its history of refusing to pay all its sovereign debts and international court judgments. And it has spent heavily to stimulate its economy, fueling inflation. The mix puts immense pressure on the government to maintain dollar reserves to sustain faith in Argentine pesos. But the controls and the resulting currency mismatches are causing headaches for nearby governments, which have had to impose tough medicine on some of their own people as a result.