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El Salvador Central bank policy rate

El Salvador Central bank policy rate: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 20 Jul 2026.

Official source: Ley de Integración Monetaria, Decreto Legislativo No. 201 de 30-nov-2000, D.O. No. 241, Tomo 349, 22-dic-2000 · Last checked 2026-07-20 · source fingerprint

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.

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Current valueno single figure
In force from2001-01-01
Official sourceLey 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 verified2026-07-20
Verificationprimary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited.
Provenancesource 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(55-2 vote, under the IMF EFF programme): private-sector acceptance is now voluntary, several articles (4, 8, 9) were repealed, and BTC has no monetary-policy role; the US dollar remains the unit of account for prices, taxes and accounting.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
# $0.005 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-rate

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Other El Salvador series: VAT (IVA) standard rate · VAT registration threshold · Minimum wage (lowest general statutory floor) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax (ISR) standard rate · Withholding tax rates · Statutory legal interest (interés legal) · Personal income tax (ISR) brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions

The same figure elsewhere: Guatemala · Honduras · Mexico · Panama · The Bahamas · all 10