Thats true when one thinks that when the peso stood at say 20 to a dollar it was hard to imigine it would be 25 or 30. Therefore, there is a lag of many months in some cases while old inventory is sold off and new imports have to be paid at higher prices plus shipping time.
Recent months (sorry weeks) have seen the peso shoot past 45, 50 then 55!
Retailers were somewhat caught off gaurd by the sudden price increases since Xmas hoping the IMF agreement would have been activated a lot sooner and therefore they have a lot of catching up to do once the prices stabilise. I find it somewhat amusing when Hippo forced the prices down over the Xmas period and asked "but why hadnt the retail prices dropped?" On this occasion retailers knew fulll well that the low rates that were forced on the Peso had a very short life and 3 or 4 weeks is no where long enough to see stabilty. Even now assuming the peso never went over 45 for the rest of the year it would take many months before we could start to see genuine price reductions on the high street which will almost certainly be absorbed by further increases in ITBIS and other taxes. One can only hope for stabilitly at the current level but personaly, it is very unlikey to hold for long.
What we saw at Xmas was intervention by Hippo to force a better rate on the Peso created this rejection spike to 55. He brought this on himself. The good news is intervention spikes are almost always short lived and the Peso has moved down to what is now new support on top of the old main trend line resistance it was sat in back in early December. The next week or so will tell us if the peso will stay in this old main trend in which case it must go back and test the old support which comes in at 36. If the peso does not fall below 40 then it has taken on a very much steeper new trend for the coming weeks and will be back to 55 and beyond very quickly indeed. If you have dollars i would wait for a week or so before buying more Pesos. 40 is key!!
Note the information I have used is based on
http://finance.yahoo.com/m5?s=USD&t=DOP&a=1&c=1 and probably gives the best average for street rates. Over the weekend last, prices went artificailly low as change houses knew rates were going down but had to err on the side on caution as the banks were closed. On those occasions you will always get a better rate using an ATM debit card. The opposite is true too when we have a rapid rise week then come weekend the exchanges will err to the higher side instead.