This is the economist and former Minister of Finance of El Salvador, Manuel Hinds.
The economist and former Minister of Finance of El Salvador, manuel hindsconfirmed that he was contacted by the economic team of the presidential candidate for Freedom Advances, javier milei. In this framework, he detailed the impact that the dollarization had in his country.
In statements to Radio Miter about if any economist close to Milei had communicated with him to talk about dollarization, Hinds replied: “Yes it’s correct. Two in the same meeting where they asked me questions about how certain things were done in dollarization. Let’s say, how come you take international reserves into account? How come you think about the exchange rate? In other words, a series of questions, in addition to being asked what the environment was like and everything else that is surrounded and how we ensure that the banks were on time with everything that had to be done. That kind of technical questions”.
Regarding how the dollarization in El Salvador, he replied: “Well, you have to know exactly what dollarization achieves for you. To begin with, in El Salvador the interest rate was twenty percent, despite the fact that inflation in us was two percent a year. AND we just dollarized, the interest rate dropped to six percent and the term [del crédito] to buy a house he went from five years to twenty-five or thirty years, which is what they lend you in El Salvador. Right now if you want, you’re going to live in El Salvador, you buy a house and they lend you six percent for twenty-five years, almost like in the USA”.
Regarding prices, he maintained: “In inflation, we have been one of the two or three countries with the lowest rate in the entire region. The countries that compete with us are Ecuador, Panama, Chile and Mexico now… But we have not had higher inflation. We have had a communist government come up and say they were going to confiscate anything and everything. In Latin America, you imagine that in any country that happens, you will have a terrible monetary crisis, people take all the money and the interest rate goes to hell. Not in El Salvador.
In another section of the interview, the former Minister of Finance referred to the indices of poverty after dollarization: “The truth is that it went down, but it didn’t go down because of dollarization. He came down for other reasons, because there were many people who were living in the United States and he sent more things… He growth is more related to this than I am going to tell you: us at the same time we completely liberalized the current account, the capital account and lowered rates”. In this way, he pointed out that “a textile industry developed in El Salvador, which is now the largest export.” He also assessed: “Before we depended, like almost all the rest of Latin America, on primary products. Now primary products, which is coffee, represent 10% of our exports. 90% of our exports are industrial”.
The presidential candidate for Freedom Advances, Javier Miley, held a meeting with the authorities of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this Friday morning.
as far as he could tell AmbitThe director of the Western Hemisphere, Rodrigo Valdés, and “other members” of his team participated on behalf of the IMF. Meanwhile, on behalf of La Libertad Avanza, Carlos Rodríguez, Darío Epstein and Roque Fernández, Milei’s economic advisers, were present.
The meeting, which took place virtually, was “an opportunity to exchange views on Argentina’s current economic prospects and understand its economic policy priorities,” sources from the agency told this medium.
Source: Ambito
