Colombian Central Bank President Jose Dario Uribe said Thursday that now would be the ideal time for Colombia to drop the three zeros from it’s currency, the peso.
Uribe said that low inflation rates would make this a good time to modify the value of the peso as well as reducing costs of operating in the economy. Another large benefit of the change would be to force drug traffickers to produce their money to change it over to the new value.
The peso has gained more than 13% so far this year on the back of massive influxes of foreign investment into Colombia, driven by high commodity prices.
Colombia is one of several countries, along with Brazil and Japan, worried by the steep appreciation of its currency against the dollar. Colombia, like other nations, sees the surge of its currency as a threat to its economy and has intervened in the foreign exchange market to try to protect exporters.