According to entrepreneurs, the pre-election season will worsen the problems that are affecting the country and prevent the government from advancing on relevant issues, such as public investment.
Luis Cardenal, president of the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP), warned that"... the next 20 months will be more difficult in all national aspects, due to the innumerable risks that the election season will bring."Everything that is coming up will no longer be decided on based on plans for the medium or long term.Public investment will not be made based on priorities.Neither will debt nor other actions.Everything is going to focus on electoral returns'."
The advertising sector will have a field day with the subsidy the State will give to the parties for the election campaign.
For the elections of 2014, they will use "$125.5 million of state money for the organization of elections and subsidies to the parties", noted an article in Prensa.com.
For the organization, $55.7 million has been set aside, which represents an increase of 44% compared to the 2009 elections, while subsidies for political parties total $69.8 million.
Between May and June 2011, the country's electoral parties spent $14.3 billion in advertising for the elections.
Acción Ciudadana, the Guatemalan chapter of Transparency International, this week presented a report on advertising spending during the election campaign.
The report indicates that total expenditure is higher, because the measurements do not include local social networks or media, nor the expenses of candidates running for deputy or mayor.
The sum of the expenses of the four main political parties in Costa Rica for the elections of February 2010 reached $45 million.
El Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) spent $17 million and the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC) reached $14 million while the Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC) budget was almost $10 million. The election-related expenses for Alianza Patriótica was $5.6 million.
The candidates and parties competing for election in Panama in May of next year spent US$3.4 million on propaganda in the first four months of 2008.
Ibope Time, the company that carried out the study, said the amount was remarkable in view of the long time that has yet to elapse before voters go to the polls.
The party that spent most was the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), the nation's largest. It spent more than US$1.6 million.