Argentina : Handbook : Time and Date

TIME AND DATE   

Local time

Argentina's time zone is 3 hours behind GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) corresponding to UTC-3:00 (Universal Time Coordinate, before Greenwich Mean Time). As a reference, Argentina is one hour ahead of New York in the summer and 2 hours ahead in the winter. Argentina does not participate in daylight savings time to save energy, so there is no time difference in the winter or summer; rather time remains the same throughout the whole year and doesn't vary from one geographical region to the other.

For more information on each time zone visit  www.timeanddate.com.

Local holidays

Although there are other festivities, the dates below are considered national holidays in Argentina. Good Friday and the 8th of December are non working days for public administration employees and optional for the remaining institutions. In order to provide comfort and rest to the public, the legal holiday is flexible and therefore it is common to transfer holidays to the Monday after or the day before the legal holiday.

Working hours

In general, office hours are interrupted between 12:00 PM and 2:00 PM for lunch and the break lasts around an hour and a half. Gas stations open early in the morning and close at midnight, some are open 24 hours. The museums in general are open 5 days a week from Tuesday to Saturday or from Wednesday to Sunday. The stores in the larger cities open on Sundays with interruptions, some are open until midnight. In Buenos Aires the magazine stands and some stores are open all night. On the other hand, in the interior of Argentina the stores close for a period of up to two and a half hours for lunch.