Ecuadorean debt: President threatens to put life before debt

Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, has an important decision to make in the coming weeks: whether social spending should take precedence over debt repayments.

Investors are becoming more pessimistic about Correa’s willingness to honour Ecuador’s debts, especially as there are doubts about how market friendly his new economy minister, Wilma Salgado, is compared with her predecessor, Fausto Ortiz, who resigned suddenly last month.

Ortiz’s resignation was reportedly in response to the government’s hard-line attack on the Isaias group, an important commercial group headed by brothers Estefano, Roberto and William. Isaias had assets seized after the government claimed it owed $661 million from the 1998 financial crisis.

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