Argentina Statutory default interest (intereses moratorios)
Argentina Statutory default interest (intereses moratorios): no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Argentina fixes no statutory percentage: Art. 768 of the Código Civil y Comercial sets a cascade (contract, then special law, then rates fixed under Banco Central regulation), and since January 2026 the BCRA's daily Tasa de Intereses Moratorios fills the residual tier.
Compare statutory interest rate across all 22 Latin American countries →
| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | Código Civil y Comercial de la Nación (Ley 26.994) art. 768: 'Intereses moratorios. A partir de su mora el deudor debe los intereses correspondientes. La tasa se determina: a) por lo que acuerden las partes; b) por lo que dispongan las leyes especiales; c) en subsidio, por tasas que se fijen según las reglamentaciones del Banco Central'; BCRA Resolución 1/2026 (7 de enero de 2026, Boletín Oficial 9 de enero de 2026) creating the Tasa de Intereses Moratorios (TIM) as that subsidiary reference |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
REFUSAL — Argentina has no general statutory interest percentage, and any single number served for it would be wrong for most claims. What a creditor can actually claim is fixed by the three-tier cascade in Código Civil y Comercial art. 768, in strict order. (1) THE AGREED RATE governs first; it is subject to judicial reduction under art. 771 where the cost of the money and the debtor's risk make the return excessive and the excess unjustified, and to art. 770, which permits capitalisation only in four listed cases (an agreement capitalising at intervals of not less than six months, a judicial obligation where the debt is not paid after judicial demand, an accountable liquidation, and other legal exceptions) — outside those, compounding is void. (2) A SPECIAL LAW, if any covers the relationship (tax, labour, consumer, insurance and public-contract regimes each carry their own rate). (3) IN SUBSIDIO, rates fixed under Banco Central regulation. Until 2026 tier (3) had no BCRA instrument, so each court supplied its own series — the Banco de la Nación Argentina tasa activa or tasa pasiva, chosen by plenary agreements and chamber actas differing by jurisdiction and by subject matter — and the Corte Suprema repeatedly annulled the results: 'Oliva, Fabio Omar c/ COMA SA s/ despido' (29 February 2024) struck down the periodic capitalisation built into CNAT Acta 2764/2022 as lacking any basis in the Code and producing a disproportionate result, followed by 'Fontaine c/ Provincia ART SA' (16 May 2024) and 'Lacuadra c/ DIRECTV Argentina SA' (13 August 2024). WHAT CHANGED IN 2026: BCRA Resolución 1/2026 approved a new statistical series, the Tasa de Intereses Moratorios (TIM), expressly to give courts the art. 768 inc. c reference for peso debts. The TIM is a DAILY effective rate equal to the average of a passive rate (30-day peso time deposits in the financial system) and an active rate (weighted average on documentos a sola firma and personal loans), collared so that the daily effective rate is never above the daily CER variation plus 3% nominal annual and never below the daily CER variation minus 3% — in substance, Argentine inflation plus or minus three points. The series is backfilled to 3 June 1993 and published daily with an official calculator, so interest for a claim is computed by running the series across the exact period, not by applying an annual percentage. IT IS NOT AUTOMATIC: art. 768 inc. c only reaches debts with no agreed rate and no special-law rate, the TIM covers PESO debts only (foreign-currency obligations are outside it), provincial and federal courts are still working through whether and from when to adopt it over their own actas, and pre-2026 periods in pending cases remain governed by whatever series the court applies. A creditor should therefore compute from the TIM series for peso debts arising after 8 January 2026 with no contractual rate, and otherwise identify the governing special law or the forum's own acta before assuming any rate. Retrieval note: bcra.gob.ar and www9.bcra.gob.ar reset connections to automated fetchers; the resolution text is readable on the Boletín Oficial and at argentina.gob.ar/normativa, and the daily series and calculator live at www9.bcra.gob.ar/BCRAyVos/calculadora-intereses-tim.asp.
Get it programmatically
curl https://latamref.dev/v1/ar/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://latamref.dev/v1/ar/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/ar/statutory-interestOther Argentina series: BCRA monetary policy rate (abolished — endogenous-rate regime) · VAT standard rate (IVA alícuota general) · VAT registration threshold · Salario Mínimo, Vital y Móvil (SMVM), monthly · Public holidays (feriados nacionales) · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Barbados · Belize · Bolivia · Brazil · Chile · all 22