Technical article

Fixed, Sliding or Moving: How Four Central American and Andean Countries Set the Dollar Rate

If the rate stayed exactly where it is today, would your monthly spending in each country look different?

By Neil Solomon · 4 min read

Picture a couple named Mark and Elena. Both are 66. His pension is paid in US dollars. They are comparing Belize, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Costa Rica, and they have a simple worry. If the local money moves, does the grocery bill move with it?

I went to the central bank of each country, and in Costa Rica to the office that handles cash declarations. Where a page gave a figure, I show it. Where a page could not be read, the article says so.

The rate, country by country

Belize. The two Belize pages give different figures. The Central Bank says BZD 2 per US dollar. The customs page says BZD 2.0175. The customs figure is for valuing goods that come in, so it may serve another purpose, but no page says so. I show both and do not pick. A bank or the Central Bank of Belize could tell you which rate applies to a pension you send in.

Nicaragua. The central bank says the sliding rate stays at zero for 2026, and it names one rate for the whole year. The note was issued in October 2025. It says nothing about 2027. That is the part we are waiting for the government to publish.

Bolivia. Here the page shows a number that is set by what banks actually do. It calls the official rate a weighted median of the dollar purchases that banks and the Central Bank make with their clients. It was BOB 11.73 for the three days after 9 October 2026. The page covers only a few days, so it tells us where the rate stands now, not where it will be next month. I read no official page about earlier rates or about any shortage of dollars, so I say nothing about either.

What does this mean for monthly spending? In Belize, a dollar pension buys the same number of Belize dollars from one year to the next, going by the Central Bank. In Nicaragua, the central bank has set the rate for 2026. In Bolivia, the rate is a figure that can change every few days, and a bank's buying rate could be a little higher or lower than the official one.

Cash at the border

Costa Rica is the one country where the rule could be read. The Instituto Costarricense sobre Drogas quotes Article 35 of Ley 8204. Anyone entering or leaving who carries cash or securities must declare them "si la cantidad es igual o superior a los diez mil dólares" (my translation: if the amount equals or exceeds ten thousand US dollars, US$10,000 shown on the page). The same rule applies to the equivalent in another currency. The article dates from December 2001. It was changed in March 2009. The declaration form was made official in Gaceta No. 185 on 26 September 2013. The section was last updated on 23 May 2022.

What is left open

• Argentina: two Banco Central pages failed to load. I say nothing about the official or the parallel rate.
• El Salvador: the central bank page was blocked to automated reading.
• Panama: the customs authority pages I read mention cash declaration rules, but gave no threshold.
• Belize, Nicaragua, Bolivia: no cash declaration page is among the sources.
• Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Jamaica: not checked yet.