As of June of this year, banks in El Salvador granted $6,121 million in loans to companies, registering an increase of almost 6% compared to the first half of 2017.
Figures from the Superintendency of the Financial System (SSF) indicate that out of every $100 in credits approved in June by banks in El Salvador, $45 was used to finance companies.
In an unstable exchange market, lack of transparency in the rules on intervention by the Central Bank of Costa Rica increases uncertainty and drives investors towards the safest currency.
EDITORIAL
The rise in the price of the dollar in Costa Rica is a negative factor for some sectors and positive for others, but generally negative for the economy, because it distorts companies' plans, diminishing their competitiveness, and because it increases market players' willingness to speculate.
For the first time in nine years, the Federal Reserve has raised the benchmark interest rate, by 0.25%, starting off a process of a gradual adjustment which will make credit more expensive.
After seven years of interest rates at historical lows, signs of recovery in the US economy have led the Federal Reserve to announce the first upward adjustment in the federal funds rate, the main reference rate for structuring interest rates in the United States and around the world.
The Salvadoran economist Manuel Hinds discussed in Costa Rica the pros and cons of dollarization, using the example of El Salvador and Panama.
The Elsalvador.com reported that "many government economists advocate keeping their local currency because they believe that inflation will remain low, but Hinds explained that the opposite happens. In the region, El Salvador, and Panama, which are dollarized, have the lowest inflation rates while countries like Argentina and Venezuela have an inflation rate of more than two digits (25 and 10% respectively) while last year, inflation in El Salvador was only 0.8%. "
An Argentine expert predicts that if the Salvadoran economy abandons the dollar it would trigger serious social upheaval ... and Argentines know all about that...
An article in Elsalvador.com by Eduardo Levy Yeyati, former official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and "who has conducted research on the causes and consequences of dollarization, the behavior of markets in times of crisis and of monetary and exchange rate regimes, said a freeze on bank withdrawals in the country would be accompanied by a pronounced economic downturn, which would be associated with an imbalance in the payment system, ie, lack of liquidity. "
Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes has rejected assertions of Vice President Salvador Sanchez about the need to return to a national currency.
President Mauricio Funes said he will not reverse the dollarization of the Salvadoran economy.
Funes, who acknowledged that dollarization implemented in the country has created advantages and disadvantages, said that to reverse the process started in 2011 "would create uncertainty", according to Elsalvador.com.
With gold as a prime example, the recommendation to protect purchasing power is to diversify by acquiring natural resource assets, particularly productive land.
Although the European crisis has shown that despite the enormity of the U.S’s public debt, bonds that back it still have the confidence of many investors, the dollar as a reserve asset raises many doubts.
The recent increase in the value of the Costa Rican colon versus the dollar is worrisome, not only because there are no clear reasons to explain it, but also because it would be hard to contain it without causing greater problems.
In the past weeks, and without apparent reason, the price of the U.S. dollar in Costa Rica dropped considerably.
Last week we surveyed some financial operators as to why these movements where occurring, the general answer being: “we don’t know”.
Tradition says that in moment of panic gold is the refuge, but this time gold has not been a good recommendation.
These are the questions being asked to antiamericans. Why, in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the great depression, the collapse of the banking system and the strongest recession experienced in our lives, is the dollar getting stronger and is giving a hard and strong lesson to the the traditional gold?