At the end of 2020, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador remained at the bottom of the Human Development Index ranking, while Costa Rica and Panama were better evaluated.
The report entitled The Next Frontier, Human Development and the Anthropocene, which was published on December 15, 2020 at the global level, updates the Human Development Index (HDI) that is calculated by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Because of the tension between the productive sector and the government, coupled with the lack of official statistics from the Central Bank, some companies in Nicaragua have chosen to stop providing information to the authorities.
In an attempt to hide the complicated economic situation, the country is going through, local authorities have not published information on the Monthly Economic Activity Index since February 2019, when the year-on-year drop was 7.5%. This prevents businessmen from making decisions based on the real situation of the economy.
Panama and Honduras were the only two Central American countries to report increases in foreign direct investment in 2018 over the previous year, with year-on-year changes of 36% and 3%, respectively.
The growth of investments directed to Panama, which concentrated 51% of the sub-regional total, explained the increase that was reached in 2018 in Central America (9.4%), since except Panama and Honduras, the Central American countries received less Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) than in 2017, explains the report "Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean 2019", produced by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
At the beginning of 2019, the Monthly Index of Economic Activity registered a 6% decrease with respect to January 2018, mainly because of the behavior of the Hotels and Restaurants and Commerce sectors.
During January 2019, in the original series, the activities with the greatest growth were livestock, 6.5%, energy and water, 4.3%, agriculture, 3.4%, forestry and wood extraction, 3.4%, education, 2.1%, and health, 1.6%, reported the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN).
During the first three months of 2019, the flow of remittances that arrived in the country totaled $384 million, 9% more than what was reported in the same period of 2018.
According to published monthly data, remittances totaled $137.3 million in the third month of the year, which represented an 11% year-on-year variation with respect to the $123.6 million recorded in March 2018, informed the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN).
Up to November 2018, the economic activity index fell 5% with respect to the same month in 2017, mainly because of the performance in the Hotels and Restaurants and Transport and Communications sectors.
The report of the Central Bank of Nicaragua states that "... in the eleventh month of 2018 the IMAE registered a 5.1 percent decrease with respect to November 2017, an average annual variation of -1.9 percent and a decrease in the accumulated variation of 2.6 percent.
Because of the political crisis that began in Nicaragua in April, during the third quarter of last year the country's GDP fell by 4.5% compared to the same period in 2017.
The Central Bank of Nicaragua reported that in the third quarter of 2018, the economy registered a 4.8 percent year-on-year decline and a 0.5 percent annual average reduction.
In the first eleven months of last year, the country received remittances from abroad for $1.352 million, recording an increase of almost 8% over the same period in 2017.
A report from the Central Bank of Nicaragua details that "... Remittances totaled 125.4 million dollars in November 2018 (US$116.0 million in November 2017), an 8.1% year-on-year variation."
From January to October of this year, 13 out of 17 domestic consumption activities reported contractions over the same period in 2017.
The third report of the Economic Activities Monitoring of Nicaragua of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep) and the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (Funides), detail that the sales of urbanization companies that build homes of medium-high and high level from January to October of this year are 80% lower than those recorded in the first 10 months of 2017.
In the first ten months of the year, the country received $1.226 million in remittances from abroad, an increase of almost 8% compared to the same period in 2017.
The Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN) reported that remittances totaled US$128.9 million in October (US$118.5 million in October 2017), an 8.8 percent year-on-year variation.
In the January-October 2018 period, remittances received by the Nicaraguan economy totaled US$ 1,226.3 million, a 7.7% increase over the same period in 2017.
Following the trend observed since May, in September the monthly index of economic activity in Nicaragua reported a 4.3% drop compared to the same month in 2017.
The Central Bank of Nicaragua reported that the Monthly Index of Economic Activity (IMAE) registered a 4.3 percent decrease compared to September 2017, with an annual variation of -0.2 percent and a 1.9 percent decrease in the accumulated variation.
During the first nine months of the year, the country received remittances from abroad for $1.097 million, recording an increase of 7.6% over the same period in 2017.
The Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN) reported that remittances totaled 121.7 million dollars in September (US$112.8 million in September 2017), which resulted in a year-on-year variation of almost 8%.
Because of the political crisis that Nicaragua has experienced since April, during the second quarter of the year the country's GDP decreased by 4.4% compared to the same period in 2017.
The Central Bank of Nicaragua reported that in the second quarter of 2018, the Nicaraguan economy recorded a year-on-year decline of 4.4 percent and an average annual growth of 1.6 percent in the original data, according to the preliminary estimate of quarterly GDP. With this result, economic activity fell 0.9 percent in the first half.
In the first eight months of the year, the country received $976 million in the form of remittances sent from abroad, registering an increase of 7.6% compared to the same period in 2017.
The Central Bank of Nicaragua reported that remittances totaled $126.7 million in August (US $120.4 million in August 2017), which represents an interannual variation of 5.2 percent.
In the first seven months of the year, the country received $849 million in the form of remittances sent from abroad, registering an increase of 8% compared to the same period in 2017.
The Central Bank of Nicaragua reported that remittances totaled 124.4 million dollars in July (US $122.4 million in July 2017), which meant a year-on-year variation of 1.6%.