Private-sector dollar deposits in Argentine banks averaged US$42.4 billion through Oct. 28, the most in any month since December 2001, central bank data show, and the share held in fixed-term accounts is at a ten-year high.
The Association of Argentine Banks (ADEBA), the banks’ trade group, said in its October bank report that dollar deposits passed US$42.35 billion in constant October 2026 dollars, adjusted for US inflation, their highest in real terms since 2002, when convertibility, the peso-dollar peg, ended. The central bank’s daily figures for private-sector dollar deposits point the same way: the average was US$34.9 billion in October 2025, and the last month with a higher average was December 2001, at about US$45 billion.
Fixed-term accounts, in which savers lock their dollars in for a set period, now hold 28% of private dollar deposits, ADEBA said, the largest share in ten years. The central bank’s data match, and show a low of 11% in November 2024; ADEBA says that is when money from the 2024 tax amnesty for undeclared savings landed mostly in accounts that can be drawn on at any time. ADEBA puts the average since 2010 at 34%, which the central bank’s series confirms.
ADEBA credits more trust in banks, the removal of several currency restrictions, the 2024 amnesty and, to some extent, the Fiscal Innocence law, which lets savers deposit undeclared money without explaining where it came from. The government estimates that about US$170 billion of Argentine wealth sits outside the formal financial system.
In real terms, ADEBA says, the stock is still less than half its late-1990s level, when deposits topped US$90 billion in today’s dollars and about 80% were in fixed-term accounts. Dollar deposits collapsed in the 2001-02 crisis, to a monthly average of US$5.6 billion by March 2002, the central bank’s series shows. More fixed-term money would give banks more predictability to lend in dollars, ADEBA says, and it says the new version of the Fiscal Innocence law could add to deposits.
The central bank’s daily series puts the average annual rate on dollar fixed-term deposits at about 1.3% so far in October, down from about 2.1% in October 2025.