Weekly Report - 18 March 2010 (WR-10-11)

ECUADOR-PERU | Tax take. Peru's tax take rose 16% in the first two months of the year to NS$9.98bn (US$3.5bn), according to the tax agency, Sunat, which said the tax on profits was up 33% due to the economic recovery. The government is predicting “a cautious but optimistic" 5.5% growth in real annual GDP in 2010; the IMF expects a higher 6.5%.   
Ecuador's tax take increased 26% in the first two months of 2010 to US$1.21bn compared with the same period last year, authorities announced. The tax take was just under half the total of remittances returned by Ecuadorean expatriates in the whole of 2009: remittances fell 12% to US$2.495bn last year. The main source of remittances is Spain (46%) and the US (40%), the central bank announced.