El Salvador colón

The colón (named after Christopher Columbus, known as Cristóbal Colón in Spanish) is the currency of El Salvador. It is also the name of Costa Rica's currency (see Costa Rican colón). Its ISO 4217 code is SVC.

The colón is divided into 100 centavos. The plural is colones in Spanish, but English-speakers often say colons instead. The United States dollar is also legal tender at an exchange rate of 8.75 colónes to the dollar. No more colones are being produced, and the economy is expected to eventually be entirely dollarized.

At the time that the dollar was adopted, banknotes being produced were 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, and 200 colones.

History

The early inhabitants of what is now El Salvador used the cacao bean as a currency, counting in cacoa equal to 400 beans. The Spanish introduced the real, but the cacoa continued in use at the rate of 200 beans to the real. During the days of the United States of Central America, the currency in use was the peso (equal to 8 reales). In 1883, the currency was decimalized, with the peso revalued at 10 reales.

On August 28, 1892, the Salvadoran mint was established. On October 1 of that same year, the government changed the name to colón to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America. At the time, the value was set at 0.5 US dollars.

Current CRC exchange rates

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