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El Salvador - Salvador's
President-elect Mauricio Funes began a
two-day meeting with international financial
institutions including the Inter-American
Development Bank (IADB), the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund on
Wednesday, according to news reaching here.
Funes told media in San Salvador that the
meeting would be used to define
"counter-cyclical measures which must be put
in place as soon as possible to face the
crisis," according to website El
Salvador.com. He also said he may separately
seek additional lending from the Central
American Bank for Economic Integration.
El Salvador's exports have been falling at a
rate of 11.7 percent and imports of
intermediate goods have been falling at 25.7
percent due to the current world economic
slowdown.
A big chunk of El Salvador's exporters are
operators of so-called maquilas, the
factories that import intermediate goods and
export finished goods, mostly to the United
States.
Counter-cyclical measures are those designed
to compensate for the ups and downs of the
economic cycle, spending in times of
economic slowdown and suspending when the
economy is dynamic.
Staff from Funes' transition team said that
the incoming government would adjust the
budget due to the fiscal deficit it will
inherit, but did not give details. The
deficit was 4.8 percent of gross domestic
product last year.
IADB official Maraa Carmenza Mclean said
that the bank is keeping credit lines to El
Salvador open and plans to disburse
300million U.S. dollars to the nation in
June. The Bank has a program worth 500
million dollars with El Salvador and paid
out 200 million dollars at the start of the
year. |
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