Control de Cambios y el Sistema de Cambios Múltiples en Uruguay: 1931-1959

The global economic crisis inaugurated by the Great Depression caused a radical change in international trade flows and buried definitely the gold standard and automatic adjustment mechanism of local currencies. Hence, countries should rethink their business relationship and face the problem of devaluation of local currencies and loss reserves. The institute that countries appealed to face the new scenario will be: the Exchange Control. In the case of Uruguay, the Exchange Control (May 1931) is installed as a mechanism to defend the "peso" and to prevent the outflows of gold and foreign currencies. In the process of installing this institution, its objectives were extended and begun the use of the multiple exchange rate system and differential exchange rate to induce structural change, refocus imports, deepening industrialization, promote exports with a higher added value and create a source of revenue for the government that was used for income distribution (trough, subsiding popular consumptions). In the short run, while Exchange Control gained a greater institutional structure, it will include not only the fixing of exchange rates and the segmentation exchange market, but it will also be used to manage the country's foreign trade and subsequently it will be used as an instrument to promote and protect the industrialization effort. However, by the second half of the fifties it demonstrated its excessive dependence on international conditions (level of international prices, etc.); and, internally, it failed to address the inflationary process that was affecting the country.