Argentina to let foreign tourists bring in dollars at a lucrative rate

Bloomberg

Argentina will allow foreign tourists to transfer dollars into a local account and exchange them to pesos at a more lucrative parallel exchange rate, bypassing capital controls in a bid to lure travelers.
Tourists traveling from abroad can open a temporary bank account in Argentina before their trip and transfer up to $5,000 into the country, the central bank announced. The account can be opened online or via an app from abroad with a passport as identification. Upon landing in Argentina, travellers can get a debit card to withdraw pesos from an ATM or use the card for purchases, according to the statement.
Tourists will also be able to choose to exchange the dollars for pesos at a rate known in Spanish as the “MEP dollar,” used for bond transactions in Argentina, according to a central bank official who asked not to be named since that detail wasn’t in the formal statement.
The measure aims to get travellers to enter dollars through official channels rather than turn to black markets, where peso trades at almost double the spot peso, which is tightly managed through capital controls.
The black-market peso, which can be obtained via illegal money-changers, trades at about 197 per dollar.
The cumbersome move outlines how much the Argentine government needs hard currency to shore up the peso with inflation above 50%, net foreign reserves estimated to be negative, and large debt payments to the International Monetary Fund coming up.
It’s also the latest measure to boost the country’s suffering tourism industry after the coronavirus pandemic.