For three months Bolivian banks could pay whatever they agreed with a customer for a dollar, but could not charge more than 10 centavos above the official exchange rate when they sold one. That asymmetry, set out in Article 6 of the Foreign Exchange Operations Regulation approved by Board Resolution No. 88/2026 of 26 June, ended on 24 September. Board Resolution No. 142/2026 approves a new regulation, repeals the old one on publication and, in the part that matters most to anyone buying currency, contains no limit on selling prices. The first official rate computed under the new rules, published at 23:30 on Friday 25 September, was Bs 12.05, against the Bs 12.22 in force that day.
The instrument is a resolution of the board of the Central Bank of Bolivia (BCB), issued under the powers Law No. 1670 grants it as the country's sole exchange authority and within the flexible regime established by Ministerial Resolution No. 245 of the Ministry of Economy and Public Finance of 26 June. It applies to public-sector bodies, to financial institutions licensed by the supervisor, ASFI, and to any private individual or company that carries out foreign exchange transactions. The recitals cite a technical report recommending that the move to flexibility be deepened in an orderly and sustainable way. There is a more immediate reason. The policy memorandum annexed to Law No. 1765, which approved the IMF programme, listed the removal of that Article 6 among the arrangement's prior actions. The BCB did more than delete it. It replaced the whole regulation and used the occasion to change the formula, the clock and the supervisory arrangements.
A median, with the central bank inside it
Under the June rules the official rate (TCO) was the weighted average of the dollars banks bought from their customers. It is now the volume-weighted median of dollar purchases against bolivianos by universal banks (Bancos Múltiples), SME banks (Bancos PYME) and the state bank, from their clients and from the BCB. Transactions between financial institutions remain excluded, and sales do not count. To find the median, purchases are ranked by price and the rate taken is the one that leaves half the volume on either side. A large deal at an extreme price drags an average; it barely moves a median. Some of the first day's 17-centavo fall may reflect the change of method, though nothing in the resolution allows the effect of the formula to be separated from that day's market.
Since 25 September there is a single number, built from purchases alone.
The least noticed change is the addition of the BCB to the list of counterparties. Dollars that banks buy from the central bank itself now enter the calculation of the official price. A median resists outlying prices, not large volumes. If the BCB's sales to banks make up a large share of a day's volume, the official rate will lean towards the price at which the BCB sells, and if they exceed half, they will set it. The regulation says nothing about their weight. The IMF programme memorandum commits the authorities to limited intervention that avoids any perception of an exchange-rate target, and to a methodology reflecting the wholesale market, including interbank trades as that market develops. Leaving interbank trades out for now fits that gradual approach. The central bank's own share of the calculation is the figure to watch for anyone who wants to know how much market there is in the number the BCB publishes each night.
A clock with no gaps
The timetable changes too, and not only the hour. Under the June regulation, only purchases made between 00:00 and 17:00 on each business day counted, and the BCB published the rate at 20:00. Deals closed after five in the afternoon fell outside every day's calculation. Now banks report to ASFI by 17:30 the purchases made between 17:01 on the previous business day and 17:00 on the reporting day, ASFI passes them to the BCB by 17:40, and the BCB publishes at 23:30 the rate that applies the next day. The window is continuous. The resolution also settles that Friday's rate applies on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and that on public holidays the rate published on the previous business day applies.
Supervision is concentrated in ASFI, which will inspect the reports and sanction false information or the selective omission of transactions under Financial Services Law No. 393. In June that task fell to the BCB in coordination with ASFI, and penalties were referred, without further detail, to the rules in force. For banks the difference matters. Their own purchases now make the official price, and leaving trades out of the report is an infringement with an identified legal basis and a named enforcer.
What the regulation leaves unsaid
The new regulation governs how the official rate is formed, when it is published and what it is used for. It sets no limit on selling prices and does not define an official selling rate. With the ceiling goes the only official figure that served that purpose. Until June the BCB published two prices, unchanged since November 2011, of 6.86 to buy and 6.96 to sell, 10 centavos apart. Between June and September there was the reference selling value, which reproduced that same spread on top of a floating rate. Since 25 September there is a single number, built from purchases alone. Nor does the resolution contain transitional provisions. It applies from publication.
That silence has contractual consequences. Contracts denominated in dollars but payable in bolivianos commonly refer to the BCB's official selling rate, and some signed since June refer to the reference selling value. Neither figure appears in the new regulation. If the parties end up applying the TCO, the debtor will pay at a rate that measures what banks pay for dollars, while a creditor who wants to turn the bolivianos back into dollars must buy them at its bank's selling price, which no longer faces a regulatory ceiling. Those clauses are worth reviewing now, with an express reference agreed, such as the TCO plus a fixed margin or a named bank's selling quote, before the gap is argued over at settlement.
Article 5(IV) makes the TCO the applicable rate for public-sector and BCB transactions and for accounting and valuation records. The text does not say whether that last reference extends to private-sector bookkeeping. Article 2 covers private persons who carry out foreign exchange transactions, and the more natural reading is that it does, although an express clarification from the BCB or the accounting standard-setters would help. In practice a company with dollar assets or liabilities will value its balance sheet at a rate that changes every night. Between the first official rate of the new regime, Bs 9.73 on 29 June, and the Bs 12.05 in force this weekend, the boliviano has lost about a fifth of its value against the dollar on the official measure.
Suppliers to the State are in a position similar to the creditor's. If public bodies convert dollar-linked amounts at the TCO, as the same paragraph suggests, anyone invoicing the State will be paid in bolivianos at the buying rate and will replace their dollars at the selling rate.
More supply, no promise on price
For importers, removing the ceiling cuts both ways. With the 10-centavo cap, a bank that paid above the market median to obtain dollars had almost no margin left to resell them, and the natural response was to sell fewer. Without it, more supply at the counter is to be expected, at a price each bank will set according to its own cost and competition. The IMF programme pushed in this direction. The memorandum presented it as the condition for banks to deal at a freely negotiated rate on both purchases and sales.
The immediate work for companies lies in contracts and treasury. It means identifying clauses that point to an official selling rate no longer published, deciding which rate will be used to value dollar balances at each month-end and, for frequent buyers of currency, comparing prices across banks, whose selling rates no longer face a regulatory ceiling.
