Understanding punctuation used for monetary figures

2POSTS

last year

OK...US citizen here getting confused over how to understand a financial figure in pesos. Maybe I am spoiled as the U.S. uses a decimal point to separate dollars from cents, and the comma as a thousands separator. But Colombia, which uses apostrophes, commas and periods....frustrates me. Why...the deflationary tactic to make 1,000 pesos the new "base" several years back seems to have resulted in some using the old convention and some using the new. So a quick question.

If a financial institution's account statement displays the value of an account as 56'380.000.00, how do you read that?

56 million 3 hundred 80 thousand - or - 56 thousand, 3 hundred eighty?

And to confirm that I understand, what is the value in US dollars presuming a $1 = 5000 COP?

Thanks all.

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nico peligro Serial expat

969POSTS

last year

What can I say..

OsageArcher Colombia Expert

1670POSTS

last year

56'380.000.00 in Colombia is 56 million, 380 thousand pesos. The last ".00" is mostly superfluous, it represents centavos. One centavo is 1/100th of one peso, a minuscule amount - the centavo was officially discontinued in 1984.

In 1931 1.05 pesos was pegged at 1 USD but it's been downhill ever since then, the Colombian peso becoming weaker and weaker. If you see centavos expressed it is an anachronism. Centavos are not now used.

As of today the official exchange rate is about 1 USD = 4336 COP. It would not be wise to use the 1 USD = 5000 COP you suggest.

So using today's exchange rate the 56'380.000 would be just several dollars over $13K USD.

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