Caribbean & Central America - April 2011 (ISSN 1741-4458)

As part of an annual report on foreign cooperation, Nicaragua's central bank (BCN) published figures regarding aid from Venezuela - long a source of concern regarding transparency due to Ortega's refusal to include them in the official budget. The report, which was a requirement by the IMF in order for the 2007 framework agreement to remain in place, showed that aid from Venezuela reached US$511m in 2010, up from US$443m in 2009 and US$461m in 2008. This brings the total received by the Ortega government since taking office in 2007 to US$1.59bn. Of Venezuelan funds received in 2010 which appeared mainly as loans, US$337m corresponded to petrol cooperation through Albanisa, the bi-national state oil company set up in 2007, 51% of which is owned by Venezuela's Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and the rest by Nicaragua's Petronic. The remainder is bilateral cooperation ear-marked for the public and private sector (US$163m) with the other US$11m in the form of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) which has gone on the mega-refinery, 'El Supremo Sueño de Bolí­var'. Aside from usual concerns regarding the Venezuelan funds [RC-10-10], leading economist Adolfo Acevedo pointed out that while overall total foreign cooperation reached US$1.19bn in 2010, a 5.1% increase on the previous year, foreign spending on the public sector - and donations in particular - saw a significant decline, pointing to a lack of confidence on the part of other bilateral and multilateral donors in the Ortega government. The report showed that resources assigned to the public sector reached US$472m in 2010, down from US$629m in 2009 while public sector donations fell to US$186.8m from US$300m.

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