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| Palocci: tightening the reins |
At the end of August, there was something of a showdown in Uruguay. Leftist president Tabare Vázquez wanted to revise the country's multi-year budget plan so that it would guarantee expenditure on education of at least 4.5% of GDP. That was, after all, one of his campaign promises.
But Vázquez's finance minister, Danilo Astori, had other ideas. Fiscal constraints, he said, meant that the government could guarantee education expenditure of only 3.5% of GDP. So he quit.
Soon, however, Astori was back in the finance ministry, and the budget plan had no explicit assurances with respect to education. "As expected, the Uruguayan government's budget is austere and places strong emphasis on fiscal responsibility with a social twist," says Franco Uccelli, an analyst at Bear Stearns.
The clash between a left-wing president and his...
