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Pandemic Relief for Latino-Owned Businesses: Lessons from the Washington DC Metropolitan Area

By Robert Albro and Eric Hershberg*

Latina microenterprise in Washington DC/ Credit: Liz Albro

While the impacts of the pandemic and public health measures to contain it have been widespread across all demographic groups in the United States, minority-owned businesses have been disproportionately affected, with Latino-owned enterprises hit the hardest. A newly released CLALS study describes steps taken by local jurisdictions to ameliorate these impacts, identifies challenges experienced by Latino business owners in accessing pandemic relief, and offers recommendations to better support minority enterprises in anticipation of future crises.

  • By June of 2020, a Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative pulse survey reported that 83 percent of Latino businesses had experienced a negative impact from COVID‑19, and the National Bureau of Economic Research reported that the number of Latino business owners nationwide had declined 32 percent.
  • In the Washington Metropolitan Area, Latino business owners surveyed by CLALS during the same time period reported catastrophic losses of customers and sales, pressures on liquidity, employee layoffs, and dramatic disruptions of their day-to-day business operations.
  • In many cases the industries in which Latino businesses are concentrated made them more vulnerable. The onset of the pandemic had an immediate negative impact on Latino front-line workers in essential industries and on restaurants and retail establishments that rely heavily on foot traffic, forcing widespread closures. An estimated 25 percent of Latino businesses nationwide are either permanently shuttered or remain temporarily closed.

Nearly all Latino business owners CLALS surveyed in mid-2020 – 94 percent – ranked as most important the need for greater access to financial assistance to survive the crisis. However, the pandemic has exacerbated long-standing disparities between Latino-owned and other businesses, with Latinos among those receiving the least support to help weather the economic catastrophe.

  • According to a 2021 Federal Reserve report, Latino businesses were less than half as likely as White-owned firms to be approved for a loan during the COVID‑19 emergency. And the U.S. Small Business Administration reported only 7 percent of Latino businesses that applied received Paycheck Protection Program funding in 2020, compared to 83 percent for White-owned enterprises.
  • Latino small business owners experienced multiple barriers to access, including in many cases not having a relationship with a bank or professional financial service provider, lack of access to timely Spanish-language information about programs, immigration status, and inadequate accounting that left them ineligible for government relief.

CLALS’s study documents all federal, state, and local pandemic relief programs in the DC-metro region, and concludes that outreach by assistance providers did not always reach Latino business owners because local governments did not necessarily seek to engage them through preferred channels and familiar institutional counterparts. It further concludes that cities and counties striving to improve support for businesses in historically underserved communities in advance of the next crisis can be more inclusive and effective by discussing challenges and sharing best practices among each other,  targeting aid sooner to specific industries and business types, coordinating at the outset with trusted community ambassadors with strong local knowledge, and improving their awareness of how and where to best engage minority and Latino business owners, both in-person and through the right channels of communication.  

Nationwide Latinos are the most likely to start a business of any group, and they are also the fastest growing population in the Washington Metropolitan Area. Our region’s economic prosperity is increasingly connected to the success of its Latino entrepreneurs. How well its business ecosystem supports new Latino start-ups, business growth and stability, during normal economic periods but also the next inevitable crisis, will be a big part of sustaining any such prosperity. But this, in turn, will depend upon applying key lessons learned from the present pandemic crisis, including further institutionalizing the advantages of inter-jurisdictional collaboration and information-sharing, and the need to better support non-governmental and community-based institutions other than banks – which effectively channeled information, financial and technical assistance to Latino and minority enterprises throughout the crisis – as mediators between local jurisdictions and often hard-to-reach Latino business owners.

September 21, 2021

* Robert Albro is a Research Associate Professor in American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. Eric Hershberg is the Center’s Director and a Professor in American University’s School of Public Affairs. This report is part of an ongoing Center research program examining Latino Entrepreneurship.

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by clalsstaff on September 21, 2021  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on September 21, 2021

https://aulablog.net/2021/09/21/pandemic-relief-for-latino-owned-businesses-lessons-from-the-washington-dc-metropolitan-area/

Latin America: Enduring Less Drastic Declines in Remittances than Predicted

By Gabriel Cabañas*

Ria Money Transfer/ Adam Fagen/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

The decline in remittances during the COVID-19 pandemic has been less severe than predicted for Latin American and Caribbean countries because many migrants are in essential jobs and industries benefitting from generous U.S. income-protection measures, and a good U.S. recovery suggests positive trends will continue.

  • In April 2020, a month after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic, the World Bank estimated the resulting economic shock would cause remittances globally to drop by around 20 percent over the year – the greatest single year drop ever recorded. The Bank said the decline hinged on the fall of wages and employment of migrant workers. Other factors loomed large, such as China’s announcement that its economy had contracted 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, and Europe, especially Italy, faced growing cases of the coronavirus.

More recent data tell a different story. The pandemic reduced global economic growth to -4.5 percent to -6 percent, which, while devastating, was cushioned by good performance in numerous sectors and industries. Contrary to the prediction of a 20 percent decline in 2020, remittances experienced only a 7 percent drop. Some remittance-receiving countries, including Mexico, actually reported growth in remittances from 2019 to 2020.

  • Generous stimulus programs, which the World Bank could not have predicted, preserved an income flow for companies in “essential” industries employing migrant workers, and those losing jobs received generous unemployment benefits.
  • A shift to digital remittances also made it easier and less costly for migrant workers to send money to their families. Western Union, which is the largest single remittance handler (with 10 to 20 percent of the market), reported that revenues increased 16 to 20 percent in 2020. Other channels appear to be growing even faster. The impact of remittances from migrant workers in the United States was further increased by currency devaluations in emerging economies hit hard by COVID.

Policymakers and academics have traditionally viewed remittances as having marginal positive impact on the economies of recipient countries – judging that foreign direct investment (FDI) has a much deeper impact – but that assessment is changing. A report published last year examined 538 estimates of the impact and found that 40 percent showed a positive correlation, 20 percent showed a negative correlation, and the remaining 40 percent were neutral. Observers increasingly think that remittances used by recipient families for consumption are often their optimal use. During periods of income shock, such as environmental catastrophe, increases in remittances replace roughly 60 percent of lost income, according to some estimates. During the Great Recession (2008-09) FDI dropped 39.7 percent, but remittances only dropped 5.2 percent. For a select group of remittance-receiving countries, including El Salvador, remittances have grown to provide more than 20 percent of GDP.

  • In 1970 remittances worldwide totaled less than $50 billion (in 2018 dollars), and in 2018 they exceeded $600 billion – surpassing all overseas development assistance and, in 2019, all FDI (except Chinese investment). Some experts claim much of this growth is a function of measurement error – caused by how banks track remittances – but the fact that remittances have been steadily growing since the 1970s is no illusion.
  • The hemisphere’s continuing challenges emerging from the pandemic raises questions about the future, but – as long as generous stimulus plans, essential work protection, and a strong dollar continue – remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean appear likely to allow recipient countries some continued reprieve from the economic devastation caused by COVID-19 and help them achieve an earlier economic recovery.

September 3, 2021

* Gabriel Cabañas is studying international relations and economics in the School of International Service.

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by clalsstaff on September 3, 2021  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on September 3, 2021

https://aulablog.net/2021/09/03/latin-america-enduring-less-drastic-declines-in-remittances-than-predicted/

U.S.-IADB: A Last-Ditch Effort at Securing U.S. Hegemony?

By Christy Thornton*

The Inter-American Development Bank building in Washington, DC
The Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC./ Wally Gobetz/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

The election this month of Cuban-American hardliner and Trump National Security Council staffer Mauricio Claver-Carone to head the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) signals a significant shift in Washington’s approach toward the multilateral institution, but Trump’s attempt to reassert U.S. strength through the bank may, paradoxically, be a sign of weakness. Claver-Carone was the first U.S. candidate put forward to head the Bank in its 60-year history, overturning an unwritten rule that the president of the Bank should be a Latin American. After a long summer of procedural maneuvering failed to delay or block the contest, other potential candidates from Argentina and Costa Rica withdrew.

  • Mexico’s decision in August to go along with the election cleared the way for the quorum necessary to hold the vote, and Claver-Carone won election despite fully one-third of member countries abstaining.

As I show in my forthcoming book, Revolution in Development, U.S. administrations since FDR have often responded to Latin American demands for representation in and redistribution through multilateral organizations by ceding procedural power to Latin Americans.  

  • In earlier eras – during the negotiations over the first Inter-American Bank in 1939‑40, the Bretton Woods institutions in 1944, and then the founding of the IABD in 1959 – Latin Americans demanded a seat at the table and decision-making power. U.S. leaders acquiesced, preferring to lead through consent rather than coercion. When the IADB was created, the United States agreed to a minority-share position and a concessional lending program, allowing it to both meet Latin American demands for development and also counter accusations of commercial and financial domination.
  • While the bank’s tenure has not been without controversy, the major congruence in economic policy prescriptions that emerged with the Washington Consensus in the 1990s meant that, even without its representative in the top spot, the United States could be assured that its interests in the region were furthered by bank activities.

The election of Claver-Carone represents an about-face in this strategy of securing consent and reinforces three aspects of Trump’s approach to the region: isolating left-wing governments like Venezuela; countering China’s growing influence; and reiterating the primacy of private enterprise and investment over public multilateral lending.

  • The very public dispute over who should represent Venezuela at the 2019 IADB meeting in Chengdu – which was to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the bank’s founding and the 10th anniversary of China’s membership – challenged U.S. influence over the institution. The Venezuelan opposition under Juan Guaidó wanted to send Ricardo Hausmann, a longtime IADB official, as its representative, but the Chinese government suggested instead that no Venezuelan representative be seated, leading to the meeting’s sudden cancelation. China’s action seems to have convinced Trump that the IADB was slipping from the U.S. orbit.
  • Seeing China as a competitor in Latin America, Claver-Carone will seek to use the IADB to counter Chinese influence. The most important way that he seeks to do that, made explicit during his campaign for the bank presidency, is through further capitalization of IDB Invest, the bank’s private-sector lending arm. This emphasis on private-sector development comes despite the fact that governments throughout the region are struggling through the worst economic downturn in decades due to the ravages of the coronavirus, with insufficient public health infrastructure and little in the way of safety nets for working people. While the bank has announced more than $3 billion in additional funding for governments to mitigate the crisis, Claver-Carone has stressed that his emphasis will be, above all, on strengthening private enterprise.

Earlier administrations demonstrated their faith in the strength of U.S. influence in the region through ceding some procedural control in the IADB, thereby securing multilateral legitimacy – but the Trump Administration’s successful push for Claver-Carone is instead an attempt to assert U.S. dominance. While Trump’s “America First” approach to the bank might seem like an attempt to bolster U.S. strength, it may instead actually reveal a fundamental weakness in U.S. legitimacy in the hemisphere. If the U.S. hegemony has to be imposed from the top down through domination rather than consent, it is sure to engender resistance.

September 30, 2020

* Christy Thornton is an assistant professor of sociology and core faculty member for the Latin America in a Globalizing World Initiative at Johns Hopkins University.

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by clalsstaff on September 30, 2020  •  Permalink
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Argentina: Yet Another Generalized Default?

By Arturo C. Porzecanski*

Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Argentine President Alberto Fernández during a working meeting with governors last week/ Casa Rosada/ Creative Commons

The Argentine government’s current attempt to force investors to accept a punishing debt-restructuring plan puts the country at risk of yet another sovereign default on foreign-law, foreign-currency debt. The attempt validates the massive loss of confidence that took place last August, when local and foreign investors ran for the exits in the wake of the unexpectedly strong performance of the Alberto Fernández-Cristina Fernández de Kirchner ticket in the country’s presidential primaries.

  • Confidence had already been set back in early 2018, after a series of disappointments with how then-President Mauricio Macri was running overly loose fiscal and monetary policies that encouraged excess government borrowing and facilitated capital flight. Macri’s decision to turn to the IMF for a huge bail-out loan in exchange for a modest fiscal and monetary belt-tightening shored up confidence, but the prospect of Peronism’s return to high office undermined investor confidence anew, causing a steep plunge in Argentina’s stocks, bonds, and the currency from which it has not recovered.

Fernández had a window of opportunity to provide confidence to local and foreign investors – following the example set by Brazil’s Lula da Silva back in mid-2002, when his pulling ahead in presidential polls sparked the beginning of a market rout in that country. However, all that Fernández has done is blame Macri for all that was going wrong, denying that mistrust of Peronism was also a factor in deepening the financial and economic crisis.

  • Absent any reassurance, investors have been reluctant to show up at auctions of new peso- and dollar-denominated treasury bills, preferring to cash out of positions whenever those obligations matured. Therefore, even before Fernández took charge in December, Macri was forced on one occasion to unilaterally postpone repayments of treasury bills falling due.
  • Fernández has institutionalized the practice of deferring by decree the majority of payments coming due each month, thus defaulting time and again on most peso and dollar obligations subject to Argentine law and jurisdiction. Until very recently, however, he and the Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, were honoring their obligations contracted under New York law and jurisdiction.

The coronavirus disrupted a less investor-unfriendly alternative devised by Fernández to avoid a repeat of the massive default, financial isolation, and bruising legal defeats (in New York courts) that his predecessors had suffered during 2002-2015. The idea was for federal and provincial governments to develop debt-restructuring proposals and present them to bondholders by mid-March, in order to obtain by mid-April creditor approval of a deferral of payments coming due during 2020-23.

  • To cushion the blow of the pandemic, the debt-restructuring plan, delayed to mid-April, included terms and conditions that were substantially worse for bondholders. Investors holding $66 billion of bonds are being asked to write off some principal and most interest payments throughout the decades-long life of new bonds to be issued in exchange for existing ones, in a proposal that would impose (net present-value) losses on bondholders averaging at least 60 percent. The Province of Buenos Aires has presented a similarly aggressive debt-restructuring plan.

A critical mass of investors has spoken out against the government’s proposal, including outright rejections by three groups of bondholders who could block any deals. To ratchet up the pressure, the federal government skipped a $503 million payment due on April 22, setting the clock running on what could easily turn into Argentina’s ninth sovereign default on foreign-law, foreign-currency debt.

  • One constructive way for Argentina to break the impasse with its private creditors would be to ask fewer concessions from them by deciding to seek new financing from, or else a rescheduling of debt service due to, the IMF. This would be achieved by requesting support under a longer-term Extended Fund Facility. Because Argentina’s program with the Fund was a short-term standby facility, under which $44 billion were disbursed, the whole amount plus interest is to be paid back in full between now and 2024. These scheduled payments to the IMF amount to more than 40 percent of total foreign-currency payments the government of Argentina is supposed to make during 2020-24.
  • If the Fernández administration were willing to work with the IMF on an economic program that would impose fiscal and monetary discipline to kick in once the coronavirus pandemic is over, the government would not need such large concessions from its private investors. In fact, such a partnership with the Fund would pave the way for a gradual return of investor confidence and the reopening of its domestic bond market for renewed financing on a voluntary basis.

April 28, 2020

*Dr. Arturo C. Porzecanski is a Distinguished Economist in Residence at American University and a member of the faculty of the International Economic Relations Program at its School of International Service.

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by clalsstaff on April 28, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 28, 2020

https://aulablog.net/2020/04/28/argentina-yet-another-generalized-default/

Guatemala: Fiscal Challenges Await New President

By ICEFI and CLALS*

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei is sworn in, January 14, 2020

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei is sworn in, January 14, 2020/ US Embassy Guatemala/ Flickr/ Creative Commons/ https://bit.ly/2GeHS0U

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, inaugurated on January 14, faces a deeper public finance crisis than previously estimated, putting even greater pressure on him to undertake fiscal reforms and start the slow and difficult process of fiscal stabilization and recovery.

  • The Giammattei administration has inherited a fiscal mess from former President Jimmy Morales, during whose four-year administration public spending on principal social needs didn’t surpass 8 percent of GDP (7.9 percent in 2019). Despite slow, slight growth in the education budget in 2015-2019 and a growing population, the number of students enrolled at the elementary and high school level actually contracted. Spending on health – in a country with half of its children suffering from chronic malnutrition, one of the lowest health service levels, and one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world – remained around 1 percent of GDP. The military budget under Morales, however, expanded considerably, allowing the Armed Forces to purchase weapons and a ship and to at least try repeatedly to buy military aircraft.

The fiscal situation is worsened by the persistent inability of the national tax authority (SAT) to achieve its collection goals for almost a decade, as well as by the array of amnesties and fiscal privileges approved by the National Congress in 2015-19. As a result, the Morales administration ran up fiscal deficits from 1.1 percent of GDP in 2016 to 2.5 percent in 2019 – accelerating the increase in the stock of public debt from 24.7 percent of GDP in 2017 to 27.0 percent in 2019 – Guatemala’s highest in recent history.

  • Making things worse, the debt was principally handled through issuance of Treasury Bonds sold on the national and international markets at terms – higher rates and shorter maturity periods – less favorable to the Guatemalan government. Last September Congress passed a law, supposedly to formalize cattle growers and ranchers (a sector well known for not paying taxes), that many observers say is so badly written that it opens the door to more tax fraud and even money laundering by powerful drug cartels. ICEFI and even some members of Congress note this has the potential to cause even greater revenue losses in 2020.

Budgetary pressures seem very likely to continue rising this year, further complicating the new president’s challenges. The Constitutional Court in late November ruled that the Executive Branch must correct the way it calculates the transfers that the Constitution requires the Central Government make to the municipalities, the Judiciary, the San Carlos University (Guatemala’s only public university), and the federated and non-federated sports institutions. If this ruling is confirmed, it will generate a huge increase in those organizations’ budgets, seriously exceeding the government’s current fiscal capacity by more than US$1 billion (1.2 percent of GDP).

  • ICEFI’s analysis shows that the only way for the new government to overcome the public finance crisis is to undertake far-reaching fiscal reform – revitalization of tax administration, a credible fight against corruption and tax evasion, and correcting budget priorities. For a government more inclined to pro-business and liberal economic thinking, such reforms may represent a considerable political challenge.
  • President Giammattei also inherited a difficult political situation from his predecessor, whose conflict with the UN-supported International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and whose alliance with persons widely believed to be involved in corruption further undermined popular confidence in the government. The new president will be judged harshly if he fails to demonstrate early on a commitment to fight corruption, increase transparency, and make government more accountable. Accusations that he himself has been involved in corruption are already arising. He faces these tough economic and political challenges – with diminished resources, fiscal chaos, and with the previous administration’s allies considerably strengthened – at a time that Guatemala can ill afford to continue to stumble from crisis to crisis.

January 23, 2020

* The Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales conducts in-depth research and analysis on the region’s economies. Data and charts supporting this article can be found by clicking here. This is the fourth in a series of summaries of its analyses on Central American countries. The others are here, here and here.

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by clalsstaff on January 23, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on January 23, 2020

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Cuba: Facing a Tough New Year

By Eric Hershberg, William M. LeoGrande, and Max Paul Friedman*

Intensified U.S. sanctions and the crisis in Venezuela are forcing renewed belt-tightening in Cuba and hindering the government’s ability to undertake even its modest economic reform agenda, but the country is not entering a new “special period” and significant instability does not appear likely in 2020 despite some increased social tensions. The big losers from U.S. sanctions are the small private-sector businesses — B&Bs, restaurants, and entrepreneurs — providing services to U.S. visitors, an estimated 638,000 a year before the Trump Administration clamped down over the course of 2019. But the government has also been forced to make major cutbacks.

  • To cope with fuel shortages caused by U.S. sanctions against oil companies shipping Venezuelan oil to Cuba, the government reduced production in many factories to maintain energy supplies to consumers and avoid overly straining the power grid. Public transportation also faced drastic cuts, largely because of a lack of diesel fuel needed to distribute gasoline. Only some of the affected bus routes have since been restored.
  • Shortages of an array of necessities — from bread, coffee, meat, and many basic medicines to all energy products — have been severe and show no sign of abating as the economy sputters. Domestic demand for products that Cuba can produce, including electric bicycles and appliances, is strong, but financing is too tight. The government is phasing out the convertible peso (CUC) that it artificially pegged to the dollar and is establishing new hard-currency stores to capture dollars now flowing abroad as Cubans buy both consumer goods and inputs for domestic private enterprises in Panama and elsewhere at the rate of $25 million per month — hard currency the government desperately needs. Those dollars the government captures will supposedly be made available for domestic producers to import essential inputs. Cubans expect the CUC to become worthless paper sooner as some vendors now accept only foreign currency, and the street value of a dollar is now more than 1.15 CUC (compared to the official rate of 0.87 CUC).

One leading economist deemed 2019 to have been the worst year since 1993 — with growth essentially flat — and said the forecast for 2020 looks no better. State-owned enterprises are failing to perform efficiently despite years of rhetoric about rationalization and improvements. Foreign purchases, long hindered by a lack of hard currency, have been made even harder by the U.S. sanctions, as suppliers increasingly fear Washington’s scrutiny. The government has not responded to growing pressures by accelerating the sorts of meaningful reforms that have long been needed to increase production and efficiency.

  • Its strategy focuses on import substitution, according to a senior economic official, to reduce the need for hard currency by producing more consumer goods and inputs domestically. The tourism sector has boomed over the past decade, but more than half the hard currency revenue it generates goes to imported inputs. Cuba spends some $2 billion importing food while more than half its arable land lies fallow.
  • Financing investment needed to make import substitution a viable strategy is difficult. Cuban government officials speak of doubling domestic investment, now only 11-12 percent of GDP, but without increasing indebtedness — a huge task for such an inefficient economy. In addition to encouraging tourism enterprises to substitute local for imported inputs, the government hopes to improve conditions during 2020 by implementing a decades-old proposal to establish a closed dollar-based system in which companies retain a portion of revenues to finance investment and imports.
  • Foreign direct investment is the other potential but a largely elusive source for capital. Government fact sheets continue to emphasize the importance of the Mariel Special Export Zone, which has some 50 promised users, $2.5 billion in promised activity, and 7,000 promised jobs. Actual activity in the Zone, however, falls far short of that. The Trump administration’s activation of Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (“Helms-Burton”), which allows the previous owners of property expropriated after the 1959 revolution to sue anyone benefiting from it, has made new investors hesitant.

While the economic outlook looks difficult indeed, there are few signs that the government is anxious about social frustrations and tensions becoming a serious challenge, much less an existential threat. The government continues to resist obvious (and relatively easy) reforms, such as allowing cuentapropistas licenses for multiple lines of business. Allowing the CUC to disappear gradually may be a precursor to addressing the years-old distortions caused by the country’s multiple currencies and exchange rates, but there’s still no sign that the government is ready to implement a unified peso. Havana apparently calculates that the country is hardly the pressure-cooker that U.S. policy aims to create by, as U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo reportedly told EU diplomats recently, “starving” the population so as to bring about a regime collapse.

  • Young independent journalists say that public organizing via social media is at times successfully pressing the government, which they deem largely ignorant of popular concerns, to revoke unpopular measures. Yet growing access to the internet may also serve to distract youth from more threatening forms of organizing. Giving people a sense of input on issues like the arts, animal rights, and sexual identity that do not threaten core government policies and processes is probably taking an edge off discontent.
  • The new year is likely to be difficult, particularly as the Venezuela crisis drags on, but, as observers say, “Cuba does ‘bad’ pretty well.” Hope is never a plan, but virtually everyone in Havana expresses hope that U.S. elections in November might bring back a pro-engagement U.S. policy that helps grow Cuba’s private sector and relieving pressure on sources of financing for Cuba to move ahead with its modest reform strategy.

January 7, 2020

*AU Professors Hershberg, LeoGrande, and Friedman traveled to Cuba in December.

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by clalsstaff on January 7, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on January 7, 2020

https://aulablog.net/2020/01/07/cuba-facing-a-tough-new-year/

Honduras: Facing the Budget Challenges?

By ICEFI and CLALS*

Honduran Lempiras

Honduran Lempiras/ Alex Steffler/ Flickr/ Creative Commons

Honduras’ proposed budget for 2020 reduces support to the country’s most needy – while protecting the military and security agencies – and, particularly if the debate on priorities is not made more inclusive, risks exacerbating already high political tensions and chronic economic mismanagement. On the revenue side, the draft budget shows a drop in tax revenues from 18 percent of GDP in 2019 to 16.5 percent – which, ICEFI has found, is not justified by technical analysis of the circumstances. Government spending – excluding payment on the national debt but including transfers to funds and trusts – equaled 19.7 percent of GDP, compared to 21.5 percent in 2019. (ICEFI estimates that the average government spending in Central America in 2019 will be 18.5 percent.) This drop will affect most public entities, particularly in social spending.

  • Education faces deep cuts. The budget of the Secretariat of Education, for example, will drop from 4.85 percent of GDP in 2019 to 4.49 in 2020. Transfers to public universities are slated to be reduced 23.1 percent from 2019 levels, and scholarships are also on the chopping block – cut 27.5 percent for national and 37.5 percent for international scholarships.
  • Health spending in Honduras – the country with the highest poverty rates in Central America – will decline from 2.39 percent to 2.37 percent at a time that inflation is more than 4 percent. The budget for Infrastructure and Public Services will be hit hardest – cut from 0.82 percent of GDP to 0.40 percent. Capital expenditures or investment will decline 33.5 percent year on year, including 38.5 percent from machinery and equipment and 34.6 percent for construction.
  • One of the only government sectors seeing increases is in the military and security, according to ICEFI. The 2020 budget proposes a 39.6 percent increase from 2019 on military and security equipment.

At first glance, the budget would appear to produce a surplus in 2020 of about 0.4 percent of GDP, which is double that ICEFI estimates for 2019. But factoring in the transfer of resources to the funds and trusts – a more reliable way of tracking fiscal behavior – the deficit will actually be 1.5 percent of GDP. That’s lower than ICEFI’s estimate of the deficit this year (1.9 percent), but it is achieved at the expense of the wellbeing of a majority of the Honduran population.

If approved and implemented as proposed, the budget will set back several strategic goals that the Honduran government itself has set. The budget confirms the government’s desire to reduce the public deficit principally through cuts to social spending and some capital expenditures – even though the approach contravenes commitments made under the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child and General Comment No. 19 (2016) on public budgeting for the promotion of children’s rights, which establishes that states should not deliberately adopt regressive measures that undermine child’s rights.

  • Although some provisions of the budget in principle could expand production of goods and services, they do not clearly point to either social inclusion, especially in terms of gender, age, and ethnicity. Budget allocations dedicated to attention to women are very low, equaling barely 0.19 percent of all spending. Neither does the budget focus on achieving any particular Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The transparency and inclusiveness of the budget debate in the Honduran Congress will be crucial to determining the longer-term impact of this budget on human rights and the provision of public goods and services to the most vulnerable Hondurans, including children, adolescents, and women. Executive and Congressional decisions on the budget will shift the country’s path toward prosperity and governance – or continue down a path of instability and tension. More breaks for those capable of paying taxes, while cutting essential services to those who cannot, will be a step in the wrong direction. At a minimum, Honduran leaders should demonstrate the benefits of such moves will outweigh the costs. The legitimacy and effectiveness of the Honduran budget will depend on a broad, inclusive, and honest debate.

November 26, 2019

* The Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales conducts in-depth research and analysis on the region’s economies. This is the second in a series of summaries of its analyses on Central American countries.

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by clalsstaff on November 26, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 26, 2019

https://aulablog.net/2019/11/26/honduras-facing-the-budget-challenges/

Costa Rica: Public Finance Plans are Not Sustainable

By ICEFI and CLALS*

President of Costa Rica Carlos Alvarado Quesada

Carlos Alvarado Quesada, President of Costa Rica, April 2018/ Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain/ https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Carlos_Alvarado_Quesada_CAQ_PAC_03.jpg

The Costa Rican government’s draft budget for 2020, presented to the Legislative Assembly on August 30, reveals that shortfalls in tax revenues, high deficits, and accelerated public debt endangers the country’s ability to continue its social services and maintain its traditional level of democratic governability. The fiscal reforms that Costa Rica has undertaken – Law 9635 on Strengthening Public Finances – have proven, at best, insufficient to correct the imbalances envisioned in the new budget.

  • The budget proposes a tax burden of 13.2 percent for 2020 – equal to that observed in 2018 before the tax reforms were implemented but below ICEFI’s estimate for the end of 2019 (13.5 percent). This rollback is alarming because it essentially erases the gains expected from the reforms. It is due to increased levels of tax evasion and avoidance, and illicit capital flows.
  • The government projects public spending to reach 8,475.5 billion Colones (US$14.0 billion), accounting for 22 percent of GDP – slightly below the 22.1 percent approved for this year but higher than ICEFI’s estimate for the end of 2019 (20.9 percent). The 2020 proposal implies cuts to public spending that will affect key ministries, including Education and Public Works and Transportation, the budgets of which will decline 1.4 and 0.4 percent from this year, respectively.

Costa Rica’s fiscal deficit poses another long-term challenge. The draft budget contemplates a deficit that would reach 7.8 percent of GDP, higher than ICEFI’s estimate of 6.1 percent for 2019. For Costa Rica’s fragile public finances, this would suggest an inability to achieve fiscal sustainability in the medium term despite the recent tax reform.

  • The proposed budget would grow national debt to 64.7 percent of GDP in 2020, which is double the debt level observed during the earlier years of the decade (29.9 percent).

The failure of the tax reform law underscores Costa Rica’s urgent need for a fiscal accord that responds to the challenges of economic growth, social development, and democratic governance. To avoid such a scenario, tax officials will have to devise and implement plans and strategies next year that will stop and reverse the steady loss of the Executive’s ability to collect taxes. The cuts to education, public works, and transportation could erode Costa Rican well-being. Public budgets reflect the priorities of a society, and both the Executive and Legislative authorities in San José have the obligation to expand debate to include input from affected sectors. Costa Rica will face even greater challenges if it fails to formulate a budget that includes a responsibly progressive tax regime; reduction in tax evasion and under-reporting; greater control over illicit capital flows, adoption of a principle of worldwide income; increase fiscal transparency and accountability, debt restructuring, and maintenance of spending levels that guarantee adequate universal services. 

November 18, 2019

* The Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales conducts in-depth research and analysis on the region’s economies. This is the first in a series of summaries of its analyses on Central American countries.

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by clalsstaff on November 18, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 18, 2019

https://aulablog.net/2019/11/18/costa-rica-public-finance-plans-are-not-sustainable/

Ecuador: President Moreno’s Pyrrhic Victory

By John Polga-Hecimovich*

President Lenín Moreno greets an indigenous leader on September 12, 2019.

President Lenín Moreno greets an indigenous leader on September 12, 2019/ Asemblea Nacional del Ecuador/ Flickr/ Creative Commons

Ecuadorean President Lenín Moreno’s agreement with opponents to rescind the austerity measures that sparked the recent crisis has restored calm but leaves his government irreparably weakened. The immediate trigger of the crisis was the president’s announcement on October 1 of a package of austerity measures aimed at reducing the fiscal deficit as part of his government’s $4.2 billion credit agreement with the International Monetary Fund. The key measure was elimination of a $1.3 billion gasoline subsidy expected to result in a 25-75 percent increase in the price of gasoline. Transport unions, student groups, and thousands of members of the country’s largest indigenous organization, the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE), took to the streets, paralyzing roads around the country and demanding Moreno step down.

  • Moreno declared a 60-day state of siege, temporarily suspended the right to freedom of association; and on October 7, flanked by the military high command, said he would not back down against what he called a “destabilization plan” orchestrated by his predecessor, Rafael Correa, and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Perhaps cognizant that a combination of social pressure and legislative and military action removed all three of Ecuador’s democratically elected presidents from 1996 to 2006, Moreno temporarily moved the seat of government from Quito to Guayaquil and imposed a curfew in Quito.
  • CONAIE President Jaime Vargas and other indigenous leaders, encouraged by the United Nations and the Catholic Church, agreed to direct negotiations on October 12. Two days later, the president signed a decree rescinding the austerity measures and reinstating fuel subsidies, and CONAIE decamped. Moreno removed the head of the military Joint Command and the commander of the army, and on October 15 returned to Quito. (He has so far resisted calls to replace Interior Minister María Paula Romo, a possible 2021 presidential aspirant, and Defense Minister Oswaldo Jarrín.)

The crisis has deeply altered prospects for the Moreno presidency.

  • Moreno survived a degree of social protest and political resistance that toppled previous presidents, but he failed to anticipate the popular reaction to lifting energy subsidies, employed a heavy-handed response to protestors, and ultimately backed away from one of the few significant political decisions his government has made. As a result, Moreno lost an opportunity to make structural economic changes and suffered irreparable damage to his political capital and credibility.
  • Indigenous groups and a resurgent CONAIE – after largely disappearing from national political decision-making under Correa – are once again a key national political actor and informal public policy veto player. They not only forced Moreno and the government to reverse course on energy subsidies, but also literally and figuratively earned a seat at the negotiating table. CONAIE appears more unified than it has been at any moment since the early 2000s and may be emboldened to seek further concessions from the government.
  • Correísmo may well be the biggest political loser. Moreno remains in power despite calls from ex-President Correa and his Revolución Ciudadana party to debate the possibility of impeachment and early elections. Correístas were excluded from discussions over the executive decree that restored the gas subsidies. Moreover, CONAIE tweeted a stinging rebuke of Correa, accusing him of opportunism and holding him responsible for the deaths of three indigenous leaders under his government.

Moreno is a lame duck just a little over halfway through his presidency. It is difficult to imagine any policymaking of consequence in his remaining 18 months in office. The government is severely handicapped politically and economically, and the political space for negotiation until elections is almost nonexistent. Moreno’s government is likely to resemble the interim governments of Fabián Alarcón (1997-1998) or Alfredo Palacio (2005-2007), which essentially served as placeholder administrations without ambitious policy agendas. Against all odds, Moreno – with a legislative minority – neutralized Correa and shifted government policy to the right during his first two-plus years in office, which throws his failure to remove the subsidy into sharper relief.

  • Economically, the picture is not much different. The protests forced Moreno to kick the can down the road on energy subsidies, while making it more difficult for the government to close its fiscal deficit. The weight of these necessary reforms will therefore fall to whoever wins the 2021 elections. The failed implementation of this economic reform and subsequent reversal of policy show the limits of Moreno’s political acumen while laying bare the country’s governability challenges.

October 17, 2019

*John Polga-Hecimovich is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of or endorsement by the Naval Academy, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

 

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by clalsstaff on October 17, 2019  •  Permalink
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Argentina: Market Meltdown Can Be Halted

By Arturo Porzecanski*

From right to left, then-president Cristina Ferdandez de Kirchner, then-minister Alberto Fernandez, and other then-ministers

Ministers of Cristina de Kirchner / Wikipedia / Creative Commons / https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Ministros_de_Cristina.jpg

The unexpectedly strong performance of the Alberto Fernández-Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (FF) ticket in Argentina’s August 11 presidential primaries has triggered a stampede out of the country’s currency, stocks, and bonds, but FF hold the key to staving off a full-fledged crisis. If the confidence of local and foreign investors is not recovered soon, the market rout has the potential to induce runaway inflation, plunge the economy into a deep recession, and cut off domestic and international financing for both the outgoing and incoming governments, potentially leading to a default.

  • The FF Peronist ticket’s 15.6 percentage-point margin of victory over President Mauricio Macri and his companion was foreseen by none of the pre-election polls. The wide gap shocked investors because it indicates the Fernández duo could win in the first round in the October 27 general election, avoiding a second-round ballot on November 24 in which the pro-market Macri was thought to have a better chance. The coattail effect of FF helped allies in provincial and local primaries around the country. With likely majorities in one or possibly both houses of congress, FF would have a powerful government that could implement much of its agenda, for better and for worse.

Now the challenge is to stop the vicious cycle of capital flight, currency depreciation, accelerating inflation, and plunging economic activity sparked by the electoral results. Failure to do so sooner rather than later will make it very difficult for the government to refinance its maturing short-term debts, and the Central Bank will likely experience a steady drain of its international reserves. In that scenario, the IMF, which has been sending big checks to Argentina every three months, would probably not send the next one in late September.

  • The Macri administration has announced some palliative measures (e.g., a 90-day freeze in gasoline prices and a tax exemption for food purchases), and the Central Bank has tightened marginally monetary conditions. But the government leadership team is powerless to restore the investor confidence that has evaporated.

Given his clear frontrunner status, Alberto Fernández could play a crucial role in reversing the trend. During eerily reminiscent circumstances in Brazil in mid-2002, local and foreign investors were increasingly worried that Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, who was running strong in the polls in his fourth presidential campaign, would end the market-friendly policies of the outgoing Fernando Henrique Cardoso – including a break with the IMF, from which Brazil had been borrowing.

  • Worried about potentially inheriting an economic and financial mess, Lula made a public statement – he called it a “Letter to the People” – making clear his commitment to sound fiscal and monetary policies and the rule of law. He wrote about a “new social contract capable of assuring economic growth with stability,” one of whose premises was “naturally, a respect for the country’s contracts and obligations.” He followed those words with concrete actions. Two months before the elections, he gave his blessing to a new IMF program committing the next government to maintain, with minor modifications, Cardoso’s austere fiscal and monetary policies.

Lula’s actions after his election, including putting a market-friendly and popular mayor in charge of his transition team and choosing a career private-sector banker to run the Central Bank, provide a path that Alberto Fernández could follow as well. Under Lula, the Brazilian Central Bank felt supported in its all-out effort to extinguish the flames of inflation and to buttress the currency. Interest rates were thus hiked as needed before and after the October 2002 elections. He initiated confidence-building meetings with investors before taking office and reassured lenders and investors, both in Brazil and abroad.

  • So far, Alberto Fernández is denying any responsibility for the developing financial and economic crisis, blaming Macri for all that’s gone wrong. But unless he makes announcements that give confidence to local and foreign investors, he will inherit a mess.

August, 22, 2019

*Dr. Arturo C. Porzecanski is the Distinguished Economist in Residence at American University and a member of the faculty of the International Economic Relations Program at its School of International Service. This article is adapted from an essay he wrote in Americas Quarterly.

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by clalsstaff on August 22, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on August 22, 2019

https://aulablog.net/2019/08/22/argentina-market-meltdown-can-be-halted/

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