Escudo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The
Escudo was the official
currency of
Portugal prior to the introduction of the
Euro in
January 1,
2002. 100
centavos made up one
escudo. Its symbol was the
cifrao, similar to a dollar sign (
$) but with two vertical bars instead of one. Amounts in escudos were written as
escudos$
centavos with the
cifrao as the decimal separator (e.g. 25$00 means 25 escudos, 100$50 means 100 escudos and 50 centavos).
Inflation made centavos essentially useless and centavo coins were eventually withdrawn from circulation (the 2$50 coin was the last one with a fractional value in escudos). Prior to elimination of local currencies and at the time of conversion, the exchange rate was 200.482 escudos to one Euro.
The ISO 4217 code of the escudo was PTE.
Escudo is Portuguese for "shield".
The official currency of Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony, is also called Escudo. Its ISO 4217 code is CVE.
Since 1999, the Cape Vert escudo was tied to the Portuguese escudo (1 CVE=0.55 PTE; 1 PTE=1.8182 CVE), and therefore to the euro (1 EUR=110.265 CVE)