Costa Rican colón
| Costa Rican colón | |
|---|---|
| colón costarricense (Spanish) | |
| ISO 4217 | |
| Code | CRC |
| Denominations | |
| Subunit | |
| 1/100 | céntimo |
| Plural | colones |
| Symbol | ₡ |
| Banknotes | 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 colones |
| Coins | 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 and 500 colones |
| Demographics | |
| User(s) |
 Costa Rica
|
| Issuance | |
| Central bank | Central Bank of Costa Rica |
| Website | www |
| Valuation | |
| Inflation | 4.74% (Jan. - Dec. 2011) |
| Source | Índice de Precios al Consumidor 2011, INEC Costa Rica, 3 January 2012 |
The colón (named after Christopher Columbus, known as Cristóbal Colón in Spanish) is the currency of Costa Rica. The plural is colones. The ISO 4217 code is CRC.
The United States dollar is also accepted unofficially in some places throughout Costa Rica.
On August 21, 2013, the United States dollar was worth 504.5 colones. The colón has had an unusual relationship with the U.S. dollar that may best be described as a "crawling peg"; instead of being defined by a constant value to the dollar, the colón instead would grow progressively weaker at a fixed rate of about 3.294 colones per dollar per month. On October 16, 2006, however, this crawling peg was modified due to weakness in the U.S. dollar and the perception that the colón is now undervalued.
The exchange rate is now free to float within a currency band referenced to the United States dollar. The floor of the band has been set at a fixed value, while the ceiling changes at a fixed rate. In practice the exchange rate has remained fixed at the lower value of the currency band.
Since October 17, 2006, the colón is no longer bound to controlled devaluations (known in Costa Rica as minidevaluaciones) by the Central Bank of Costa Rica. With the new system, sistema cambiario de bandas, the exchange rates posted by the Central Bank are a "reference" and each authorized financial institution can determine their value independently in hopes that the free market will provide a mechanism to keep them reasonable.
The symbol for the colón is a capital letter "C" crossed by two diagonal strokes. The symbol is encoded at U+20A1 ₡ COLÓN SIGN (HTML ₡) and may be typed on many English language Microsoft Windows keyboards using the keystrokes ALT+8353.
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