A poster in Argentina urges citizens not to hoard money.

Argentina is facing problems keeping enough small coins in circulation, and the shortage causes problems for citizens trying to do everything from riding the bus to laundry.

Benjamin Gedan is a Fulbright research scholar living in Montevideo and studying the Uruguayan media. He writes at his blog, “Small State,” about how the change shortage has impacted daily life in Argentina.

In a land without coins, drama in every transaction

I didn’t cause this crisis, but I sure didn’t help fix it.

Packing up my Montevideo apartment last week, I noticed that I’d accumulated a handful of Argentine monedas (coins). At least four one-peso coins, and that’s not counting the one I held onto for a few months this winter before giving it as a welcome gift to my friend Pedro, an Argentine expat who was visiting relatives in Buenos Aires.

Normally, a few local coins might seem like a harmless souvenir. But among the many shortcomings of the Argentine government, it turns out, is an inability to keep enough coins in circulation, helping to slow an economy already careening toward another financial crisis. The sheer bizarre hilarity of what Slate magazine has called “the world’s most annoying economic crisis” is subjecting the Kirchner administration to a stream of ridicule unusual even for an Argentine leader.

“Each daily transaction from shopping at the supermarket to riding a bus involves careful planning, literally down to the last cent,” Time magazine wrote in November. Small shops give candy instead of change. Big supermarkets round off the difference in their favor.

The cause of the coin crisis is not clear, or, as Slate put it, “no one can say what’s causing this absurd situation.” Some blame a “black market of hoarders” who sell coins in bulk to retailers, according to Time. That sounds plausible to me; among the coin-sellers operating in Buenos Aires are businesses owned by the same bus companies that refuse to accept bills, tokens or electronic fare cards from riders. Others, however, blame the Argentine government for not minting enough coins to meet demand and for failing to crack down on the illegal sale of metal currency.

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Photo courtesy of Flickr user remi de nimega under a Creative Commons license.