Salvadoran colón
Encyclopedia
The colón was the currency of El Salvador
between 1892 and 2001, until it was substituted by the U.S. Dollar
. It was subdivided into 100 centavo
s and its ISO 4217
code was SVC. The plural is colones in Spanish
and was named after Christopher Columbus
, known as Cristóbal Colón in Spanish.
The symbol for the colón is a c with two slashes. The symbol "₡" has Unicode
code point U+20A1, and the decimal representation is 8353. In HTML
it can be entered as ₡. The colón sign is not to be confused with the cent
sign (¢), which has a code point U+00A2 in Unicode (or 162 in decimal), or with the cedi
sign ₵, which has a code point U+20B5 in Unicode (or 8373 in decimal).
Nonetheless, the commonly available cent symbol '¢' is frequently used locally to designate the colón in price markings and advertisements.
, decided that the Salvadoran peso be called 'Colon', in homage to the "discoverer" of America. The colón replaced the peso at par in 1919. It was initially pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 2 colones = 1 dollar. El Salvador left the gold standard in 1931 and its value floated. On June 19, 1934 the Central Bank was created as the government body responsible for monetary policy and the sole body authorized to issue currency in the nation. On January 1, 2001 under the government of President Francisco Flores
, the Law of Monetary Integration went into effect and allowed the free circulation of U.S. dollar in the country (see dollarization
), with a fixed exchange rate of 8.75 colones. The colon has not officially ceased to be legal tender.
In 1883, under the presidency of Dr. Rafael Zaldívar, the First Monetary Law was adopted using "Peso (weight)" as a monetary unit, discarding the Spanish system of division into 8 reales. The new law served as a basis for the metric system, where the peso was equivalent to 10 reales. At the end of the 19th century, new paper money began to play an important role as an instrument of change as a unit of measure of the value of goods and as an element of savings. The job of issuing bank notes was decreed to private banks licensed by the government. The first bank to issue banknotes was the Banco International (International Bank), founded in 1880, this bank was granted exclusive issuing, but then lost exclusivity to Banco Occidental and Banco Agricola Comercial. Under the presidency of Carloz Ezeta, the Mint was inaugurated on August 28 of 1892. On October 1 of that year as a tribute to Christopher Columbus in the Discovery of America, the Legislature reformed the monetary law and changed the name to "Colón". The exchange rate from US dollar at that time was 2 colones for a dollar.
In 1919 Currency laws were amended stipulating that the coins with daily wear would be withdrawn from circulation and coins with cuts or punched out parts would not be accepted as legal tender. The amendment also prohibited the using of cards, vouchers or counterparts to replace the official currency. Furthermore, it gave the Ministry of Finance the power to control the circulation of the currency.
Despite the relative economic prosperity of the 1920s, the worldwide depression of 1929, the global drop in coffee prices and the government deregulation of the monetary system caused a national economic crisis. The main problem was the lack of a specialized institution dedicated to ensuring that currency retained its value by controlling banking activity. In response, the government of General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez hired an Englishman named Frederick Francis Joseph Powell to analyze and structure the Salvadoran banking body. In its final report, it was recommended that the banking system should be organized around a central bank to protect the currency and its value, and issue the currency and credit control.
Thus through the presidential initiative on June 19, 1934, the Legislature approved the creation of the Central Bank of El Salvador, an institution whose objectives are set to control the volume of credit and demand of currency, and was also conferred the exclusive power to issue monetary kind.
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
between 1892 and 2001, until it was substituted by the U.S. Dollar
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
. It was subdivided into 100 centavo
Centavo
Centavo is a Spanish and Portuguese word, derived from the Latin centum, meaning "one hundred", and the suffix -avo, meaning "portion" or "fraction"...
s and its ISO 4217
ISO 4217
ISO 4217 is a standard published by the International Standards Organization, which delineates currency designators, country codes , and references to minor units in three tables:* Table A.1 – Current currency & funds code list...
code was SVC. The plural is colones in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and was named after Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
, known as Cristóbal Colón in Spanish.
The symbol for the colón is a c with two slashes. The symbol "₡" has Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
code point U+20A1, and the decimal representation is 8353. In HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
it can be entered as ₡. The colón sign is not to be confused with the cent
Cent (currency)
In many national currencies, the cent is a monetary unit that equals 1⁄100 of the basic monetary unit. Etymologically, the word cent derives from the Latin word "centum" meaning hundred. Cent also refers to a coin which is worth one cent....
sign (¢), which has a code point U+00A2 in Unicode (or 162 in decimal), or with the cedi
Ghanaian cedi
The Ghana Cedi is the unit of currency of Ghana. The word "cedi" is derived from the Akan word for cowry shell. The Ghana cedi was introduced on 3 July 2007 and is equal to 10,000 old cedis...
sign ₵, which has a code point U+20B5 in Unicode (or 8373 in decimal).
Nonetheless, the commonly available cent symbol '¢' is frequently used locally to designate the colón in price markings and advertisements.
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History
On October 1 of 1892, the government of President Carlos EzetaCarlos Ezeta
Carlos Basilio Ezeta was President of El Salvador 22 June 1890 - 9 June 1894.He was a military ruler....
, decided that the Salvadoran peso be called 'Colon', in homage to the "discoverer" of America. The colón replaced the peso at par in 1919. It was initially pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 2 colones = 1 dollar. El Salvador left the gold standard in 1931 and its value floated. On June 19, 1934 the Central Bank was created as the government body responsible for monetary policy and the sole body authorized to issue currency in the nation. On January 1, 2001 under the government of President Francisco Flores
Francisco Flores
Francisco Flores may refer to:* Francisco Flores Pérez , former president of El Salvador* Francisco Flores , Mexican wrestling promoter* Francisco Flores...
, the Law of Monetary Integration went into effect and allowed the free circulation of U.S. dollar in the country (see dollarization
Dollarization
Dollarization occurs when the inhabitants of a country use foreign currency in parallel to or instead of the domestic currency. The term is not only applied to usage of the United States dollar, but generally to the use of any foreign currency as the national currency.The biggest economies to have...
), with a fixed exchange rate of 8.75 colones. The colon has not officially ceased to be legal tender.
Post colonial currency
In the mid-nineteenth century, farms produced tin sheets (property sheets) with the farm's name and were used as payment to employees, the sheets only had value in the farm store that issued it, so it created a kind of monopoly. During the existence of the Central American Federation, the monetary system did not change with respect to the colonial system and continued using silver by weight as the main currency with circulation of macaques and property sheets. Once the federation dissolved, the Salvadoran government decreed the issuance of the first national currency, "Reales", gold coins engraved with an "R" and the "Escudos (Shields)" were silver coins with an "E" engraved.In 1883, under the presidency of Dr. Rafael Zaldívar, the First Monetary Law was adopted using "Peso (weight)" as a monetary unit, discarding the Spanish system of division into 8 reales. The new law served as a basis for the metric system, where the peso was equivalent to 10 reales. At the end of the 19th century, new paper money began to play an important role as an instrument of change as a unit of measure of the value of goods and as an element of savings. The job of issuing bank notes was decreed to private banks licensed by the government. The first bank to issue banknotes was the Banco International (International Bank), founded in 1880, this bank was granted exclusive issuing, but then lost exclusivity to Banco Occidental and Banco Agricola Comercial. Under the presidency of Carloz Ezeta, the Mint was inaugurated on August 28 of 1892. On October 1 of that year as a tribute to Christopher Columbus in the Discovery of America, the Legislature reformed the monetary law and changed the name to "Colón". The exchange rate from US dollar at that time was 2 colones for a dollar.
In 1919 Currency laws were amended stipulating that the coins with daily wear would be withdrawn from circulation and coins with cuts or punched out parts would not be accepted as legal tender. The amendment also prohibited the using of cards, vouchers or counterparts to replace the official currency. Furthermore, it gave the Ministry of Finance the power to control the circulation of the currency.
Despite the relative economic prosperity of the 1920s, the worldwide depression of 1929, the global drop in coffee prices and the government deregulation of the monetary system caused a national economic crisis. The main problem was the lack of a specialized institution dedicated to ensuring that currency retained its value by controlling banking activity. In response, the government of General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez hired an Englishman named Frederick Francis Joseph Powell to analyze and structure the Salvadoran banking body. In its final report, it was recommended that the banking system should be organized around a central bank to protect the currency and its value, and issue the currency and credit control.
Thus through the presidential initiative on June 19, 1934, the Legislature approved the creation of the Central Bank of El Salvador, an institution whose objectives are set to control the volume of credit and demand of currency, and was also conferred the exclusive power to issue monetary kind.
Coins
Because the colón replaced the peso at par, 1 and 5 centavos coins issued before 1919 continued to be issued without design change after the colón's introduction. In 1921, cupro-nickel 10 centavos were introduced, followed by silver 25 centavos in 1943. In 1953, silver 50 centavos were introduced alongside smaller silver 25 centavos. Both were replaced by nickel coins in 1970. In 1974, nickel-brass 2 and 3 centavos coins were introduced, followed by 1 colón coins in 1984.Banknotes
On August 31, 1934, the new banking institution put into circulation the first family of banknotes in Salvadoran history. Until 1934, paper money was issued by private banks. Three banks issued notes, the Banco Agricola Comercial, the Banco Occidental and the Banco Salvadoreño. They were issued in one, five, ten, twenty-five and one hundred colones, adding two and fifty colones banknotes in 1955. The last 2 colones notes were dated 1976 and the last 1 colón note was issued in 1982. 200 colones banknotes were introduced in 1997.| Colón Banknotes | ||||||||||||
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| Image | Value | Main Color | Description | ¢1 | Red | Christopher Columbus | Presa 5 de Noviembre | |||||
| ¢2 | Magenta | Christopher Columbus | Colonial church in Panchimalco Panchimalco Panchimalco is a town in the San Salvador department of El Salvador.Panchimalco is Its 35,000 inhabitants, sometimes called "Panchos," are descendants of Pipil Indians fleeing the Spanish takeover of San Salvador during the 16th century, into areas... |
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| ¢5 | Green | Christopher Columbus | Palacio Nacional National Palace (El Salvador) The current structure replaced the old National Palace built during the years 1866-1870, which suffered a fire on December 19, 1889. The construction, undertaken between 1905 to 1911, was in charge of the engineer José Emilio Alcaine and under the direction of the foreman Pascasio González Erazo... |
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| ¢10 | Blue | Christopher Columbus | Volcán de Izalco Izalco (volcano) Izalco is a stratovolcano on the side of the Santa Ana Volcano, which is located in western El Salvador. It is situated on the southern flank of the Santa Ana volcano. Izalco erupted almost continuously from 1770 to 1958 earning it the nickname of "Lighthouse of the Pacific", and experienced a... (Izalco volcano) |
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| ¢25 | Cyan | Christopher Columbus | Pirámide de San Andres San Andrés, El Salvador San Andrés is a pre-Hispanic site of El Salvador, whose occupation began around the year 900 BC as an agricultural town in the valley of Zapotitán in the department of La Libertad... |
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| ¢50 | Purple | Christopher Columbus | Lago de Coatepeque Coatepeque Caldera Coatepeque Caldera also known as Lago De Coatepeque is a volcanic caldera in El Salvador in Central America. The caldera was formed during a series of major rhyolitic explosive eruptions between about 72,000 and 57,000 years ago... |
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| ¢100 | Olive Green | Christopher Columbus | Pirámide del Tazumal Tazumal Tazumal is a Pre-Columbian Maya archeological site in Chalchuapa, El Salvador. Tazumal means, "the place where the victims were burned," in K'iche'.... |
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| ¢200 | Orange | Christopher Columbus | Monumento al Divino Salvador del Mundo Monumento al Divino Salvador del Mundo Monumento al Divino Salvador del Mundo is a monument located on the Plaza las Américas in San Salvador City, El Salvador. A statue of Jesus Christ on a globe of planet earth and is placed on top of the tall four-sided concrete base pedestal... (Monument to the Divine Savior of the World) |
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