Weekly Report - 16 January 2020 (WR-20-02)

ECUADOR | Dollarisation. On 9 January, Ecuador marked 20 years since dollarisation. Vice-President Otto Sonnenholzner said it was essential to maintain dollarisation, which provided “certainty” and, he argued, had on balance been “totally favourable”. He said that dollarisation had helped increase the average wage of Ecuadoreans tenfold from “US$80 a month to almost US$739 [while] quadrupling or quintupling our non-oil exports”. He said Ecuador had become the number one shrimp exporter, remained the top banana exporter, and was at the forefront of tuna, cacao, and flower exports, while paying good wages. “There are difficulties, but we have to do everything we can to preserve it,” he concluded.