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00:00 Abandoning the national currency and replacing it with dollars,
00:04 Ecuador has already done so 20 years ago.
00:07 While some may have questioned the move at first,
00:10 these days no one regrets the former currency, the Sucre.
00:15 It was the best solution for us.
00:20 At that time, Ecuador was in a bad economic situation
00:23 because we could no longer buy with the previous currency.
00:26 Everything was very expensive.
00:29 It was terrible.
00:30 There were constant devaluations, there was the crisis of 1999,
00:35 a lot of emigration, a lot of family pain.
00:38 After the dollarization, the process was long,
00:43 but it has been really good to have economic stability
00:46 and to improve the country.
00:48 This difficult transition is usual when a country changes its currency.
00:55 For Ecuador, it included hyperinflation.
00:58 The country's debt was multiplied by seven.
01:01 Other countries swapped their currency for the dollar,
01:05 including Zimbabwe, El Salvador and Panama,
01:08 a move that led to more investments from abroad.
01:11 Argentina would be the world's largest economy to adopt the U.S. dollar.
01:17 While the president-elect hopes that abandoning the Argentinian currency
01:22 would help rein in inflation,
01:25 200 economists have warned that the shift may lead to many other challenges,
01:31 price hikes and increased poverty.
01:34 Argentina will also lose its monetary sovereignty
01:38 and Argentinian companies could become more vulnerable.
01:42 companies could become more vulnerable.