* Nicaragua’s leading private sector lobby, Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada (Cosep), has published a survey which warned that 64% of the 206 firms surveyed had insufficient funding to continue operations amid the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. According to the survey, 33% of firms had needed to dismiss workers. 38% of businesses said that they were operating fully, 46% were operating partially, and 7% had stopped operations entirely. Of those surveyed, just 1% said that they had received any type of financial or fiscal support from public institutions, while 78% rated the impact of Covid-19 on their business as either medium or high. Unlike other countries in the region, the government led by President
Daniel Ortega has not ordered a shutdown of non-essential businesses to stop the spread of the virus, amid fears of the impact on the country’s economy
, despite calls to do so by Cosep, concerned about the collapse of Nicaragua's health system. This also led Nicaraguan medical associations to call for a “
voluntary quarantine”. Even without government restrictions, United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac) has forecast that Nicaragua’s GDP will contract by 5.9% in 2020, the largest contraction in Central America.
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