LatinNews Regional Monitor: Caribbean & Central America - 31 May 2018

Costa Rica: Costa Rica’s new finance minister Rocío Aguilar has presented a package of cost-saving measures aimed at reducing the country’s fiscal deficit which reached 6.2% of GDP in 2017, up from 5.3% in 2016. Comprising administrative actions, decrees, directives, and legislative initiatives, the package includes provisions which: call for no increase in the 2019 state budget (bar servicing the debt, pensions, and capital spending); call for annuities to be paid to civil servants as a fixed amount and not a salary percentage; and propose implementing a new salary scheme for new civil servants, among other things. Aguilar said that none of the actions would affect social programmes or result in people being laid off. She said that these measures would bring down the fiscal deficit by between 1.6% and 1.7% of GDP over the next few years although she admitted that this is still insufficient to address the fiscal crisis. The latest figures released on 19 May by the finance ministry showed that the first four months of 2018 closed with a fiscal deficit of 1.9% of GDP, up from 1.8% registered in the same period in 2017.

End of preview - This article contains approximately 195 words.

Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article

Not a Subscriber?

Choose from one of the following options

• Subscribe
• Sign up for a one-time, 14-day trial