El Salvador policy interest rate
Monetary policy reference rate of the Banco Central de Reserva de El Salvador (BCR). Structurally null: El Salvador is fully dollarized and the BCR sets no policy interest rate.
| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2001-01-01 |
| Official source | Ley de Integración Monetaria, Decreto Legislativo No. 201 de 30-nov-2000, D.O. No. 241, Tomo 349, 22-dic-2000 (texto oficial alojado por la Superintendencia del Sistema Financiero) |
| Last verified | 2026-07-20 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
STRUCTURAL NULL (Ecuador precedent). El Salvador dollarized on 2001-01-01 under the Ley de Integración Monetaria: Art. 1 fixed the colón at 8.75 per US dollar 'fijo e inalterable'; Art. 3 gives the US dollar 'curso legal irrestricto con poder liberatorio ilimitado'; Arts. 4-5 converted colones in circulation to dollars via the BCR. The BCR no longer issues currency or conducts monetary policy, and publishes no policy/reference interest rate — only descriptive market interest-rate statistics. Do not substitute a market rate as a proxy. Side note on the Bitcoin experiment: the Ley Bitcoin (D.L. No. 57 de 8-jun-2021) was amended by the Asamblea Legislativa on 29-Jan-2025 (55-2 vote, under the IMF EFF programme): private-sector acceptance is now voluntary, several articles (4, 8, 9) were repealed, and BTC has no monetary-policy role; the US dollar remains the unit of account for prices, taxes and accounting. Verified from the full statutory text (SSF-hosted PDF, extracted locally with pdftotext; the PDF has a text layer).
Get it programmatically
curl https://usaref.dev/v1/sv/policy-rate
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://usaref.dev/v1/sv/policy-rate/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://usaref.dev/provenance/sv/policy-rateOther El Salvador series: VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates