The Honduran economy is getting out of the doldrums, pulled up by stronger US demand for its main exports. Local private sector confidence in the business-friendly government led by President Juan Orlando Hernández is spurring renewed investment, while consumers are benefitting from stronger remittance inflows. The improving security situation is also helping the rebound in economic activity. On 23 July, the deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mitsuhiro Furusawa, gave an upbeat assessment of current prospects for Central America, saying they had become “more favorable”. This assessment was based on the fact that unlike Latin America as…
Budget for 2016 clears first hurdle: On 29 July Panama’s cabinet council approved the US$20.1bn budget for 2016, up US$534m on the current 2015 spending plan. According to the minister of economy and finance, Dulcidio de la Guardia, US$2.3bn will be spent on education and culture, US$3.6bn on health, US$2bn on security and public safety, US$2.1bn on transportation and communications and US$1.4bn on industry, trade and tourism. Major projects that will be funded in the budget are line 2 of the Metro, the urban renewal of Colón, the fourth bridge over the Panama Canal, the expansion of water and sewer…
Solís warns of need for higher tax revenue: While President Luis Guillermo Solís has indefinitely postponed discussion of public sector salary reform (see related article) on 31 July he argued that new sources of government income were urgent. The country could not cope “one year more” without the legislative assembly approving new taxes. Solís made his appeal ahead of a series of extraordinary sessions of congress in which the executive will have the authority to determine the agenda of legislative bills up for discussion. President Solís argued that the country can no longer bear the burden of the growing fiscal…
Around 12,000 public sector workers took to the streets of San José on 27 July to protest against plans to increase the participation of the private sector in the country’s energy markets. Marchers were also motivated by a recent debate over public sector wages, following widely reported claims that many of their salaries are much higher than those working in the private sector. Most of the demonstrators came from unions affiliated to the state energy and telecommunications firm, the Instituto Costariccense de Electricidad (ICE), but they were supported by others from the university sector, the judiciary and the trade union…
The fatal shooting of a young woman and two children last month by the Nicaragua’s national police (PN) in a botched counter-narcotics operation is only the latest incident to reignite concerns regarding the PN – previously one of Nicaragua’s most trusted institutions. With its response to protests against the government’s US$50bn ‘Gran Canal’ project already subjecting it to criticism at the end of last year, the PN’s handling of recent anti-government protesters have also fanned opposition complaints regarding its lack of independence and subjugation to the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government led by President Daniel Ortega. The incident,…
With the 6 September general elections looming, the recent anti-corruption drive led by the attorney general’s office (AG) and United Nations-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig) is not just proving damaging for the Partido Patriota (PP) government led by President Otto Pérez Molina [RC-15-07] but the political opposition. This month the supreme justice court (CSJ) appointed an investigating judge to determine whether Édgar Barquín Durán, the running mate of Manuel Baldizón, the presidential candidate of the main opposition Libertad Democrática Renovada (Líder) party, should be stripped of his immunity and investigated for alleged influence trafficking and illicit association.…