Question
What are the Chilean UF, Colombian UVR, Ecuadorian UVC, Mexican UID and Uruguayan UI, and how do they relate to national currencies?
Answer
Some countries with high inflation have found it convenient to establish a non-circulating currency (a.k.a. a non-monetary reference currency) that is continually adjusted relative to the national currency; these are generically called indexed units of account. Among other applications, certain classes of government bond (fixed-income security) are issued (denominated) in these units.
Examples
- Brazil
- Portuguese: Unidade Real de Valor (URV)
- English: real value unit
- Active March 1994 to July 1994
- ISO 4217 code: None known
- Note 1: During this transitional period, certain accounting was performed using UMC (unidade monetária contábil, "accounting currency") which was computed using UFIR (unidade fiscal de referência).
- Note 2: The statistical portal at Banco Central Do Brasil carries series marked as "monetary current unit (m.c.u.)" or "current monetary unit (c.m.u.)." These contain currency breaks, i.e., they concatenate figures reported in whatever currency was current. These are unrelated to UMC.
- Chile
- Spanish: Unidade de fomento (UF) (sometimes mis-spelled formento)
- Created 1967
- ISO 4217 code: CLF
- Colombia
- Spanish: Unidad de Valor Real (UVR)
- English: unit of real value (URV)
- Created 2000
- ISO 4217 code: COU
- Ecuador
- Spanish: Unidad de Valor Constante (UVC)
- Active 1993-2000
- ISO 4217 code ECV
- Mexico
- Spanish: Unidad de Inversion (UDI, UID)
- Created 1995
- ISO 4217 code: MXV
- Uruguay
- Spanish: Unidades Indexadas (UI)
- English: inflation indexed units, indexed units of account
- Created 2002
- ISO 4217 code: UYI
- Uruguay
- Spanish: Unidad Reajustable (UR)
- Predecessor to the UI
- ISO 4217 code: None known
References
- Brazil
- Colombia
- Mexico
- Uruguay
- Theory
- In practical application
- At Wikipedia
See also
- Understanding Data: Latin American government bonds
- Understanding Data: Countries with successive currencies
Keywords
CPI, currency, indexation, inflation
Related Releases
Sovereign yields - Monthly
Exchange Rates - Daily
Government bond yields [TES]