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LatinNews Daily - 09 July 2020

In brief: Nicaragua’s private sector warns of pandemic impact

* 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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