Nicaragua Turns to Economics

...Empty shelves, astronomic prices and a GNP hovering at the 1940 level were more than the Nicaraguans could take, and 54 per cent of the electorate simply did not believe the Sandinista slogan, Todo sera mejor ("Everything will be better...

...He gave me two examples: his brother, a gynecologist, who earns his living by playing guitar in Los Angeles night clubs...

...Farm products constitute the bulk of Nicaragua's exports—down to barely $250 million annually compared with $650 million 20 years ago, while the foreign debt has gone from $2.1 billion when Sandinista rule began in July 1979 to $8 billion today...

...Gloria Lopez hopes her husband will now be able to secure the glue he once used in his shoe repair shop...

...In the streets of Managua, news that the boycott was to be ended was viewed in more personal terms...

...Those whose land was unlawfully appropriated by the Sandinistas will get coupons for use at auctions of almost 500,000 acres of good state land standing idle, Mayorga explained, or else will receive long-term bonds...

...This time, on a 1,000 córdobas bill the figure 200,000 was to be stamped, giving it a value of exactly two U.S...

...product has been subject to "triangulation"—i.e...

...summer, due to be harvested 100 days after Chamorro is sworn in...

...has had to go through a third country to skirt the embargo...

...Agriculture, however, is the main focus of Mayorga and the other economists around President-elect Chamorro...

...It quoted aSandinista union leader who threatens to have workers "paralyze production" if UNO does not respond to demands for "salary readjustments...

...Henotedthat, on the contrary, they are to be granted property rights where they do not already have them...

...But he is fully aware that UNO—precisely to stress it is no less committed to the public's welfare than the Sandinistas supposedly were—makes no mention in its recovery plan of dispersing the country's natural resources, or of totally reprivatizing banking and foreign trade...

...For that first crop to be a success, says Mayorga, two conditions have to be met: a smooth transition (no departing dirty tricks from Sandinistas), and generous help from Nicaragua's friends, especially the United States...

...Corina Portoban, a schoolteacher turned domestic appliances retailer, looks forward to having her children taste chocolate for the first time...

...Former owners of industrial plants who can prove unjust confiscation in court will be compensated at a rate equaling what they declared to the tax authorities the year before the revolution, he continued, abandoning his normally serious demeanor and smiling from ear to ear...

...The most original element of Mayorga's economic recovery plan may be the introduction of a new currency that will be called "córdoba oro, " or gold Cordoba, and will be at parity with the dollar...

...Gilberto Cuadra, president of the Superior Council for Private Enterprise (COSEP), the country's leading business organization, likened them to a big balloon that had been pierced...

...Outgoing President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, in a further gesture aimed at arousing popular concerns, has appealed to FSLN activists to be watchdogs over such achievements of the revolution as the nationalization of natural resources, banks and foreign trade...

...Its design has not yet been decided upon, but it certainly won't bear the inscription on Sandinista coins, "Free fatherland or death...

...Leaving his wife and two children in Miami, he returned here to track the failing economy and develop a detailed recovery plan based on free-market principles while serving as a professor at the Central American Institute for Business Administration...

...That his fears are justified soon became apparent from an article in the FSLN daily Barricuda...

...Meanwhile, the Sandinistas have raised the salaries of some public employees as a farewell gift, thereby contributing their little bit to worsening inflation...

...This clearly struck a deeper chord with the people than they were about to let on to the opinion surveyors, who had been predicting an FSLN landslide...

...The election results thus came as a shock to the Sandinistas...

...With direct importing she will be able to sell her wares cheaper, shepointsout, since everyU.S...

...Mayorga, one of the very few people convinced the Sandinistas would lose the balloting, completed his PhD in economics at Yale in 1986...

...in the dollar store and sells them for córdobas in the huge market on the Mercado Oriental...

...Whether or not UNO can revive the economy and gain the confidence of outside agricultural investors will depend to a great extent on its ability to provide seed and fertilizer needed to plant the first crop of the...

...I discussed the potentially explosive issue, among several others, with Francisco Mayorga Balladares, the man many expect will be either the Minister of Economics or the Director of the Central Bank after inauguration day...

...She buys radio-cassettes, irons, food mixers, etc...

...The future ancien régime also has been warning that the Chamorro government might try to oust peasants from the plots they have been allotted under various Sandinista agrarian reform programs...

...They had lOyears and they couldn't do it" was the oft-chanted campaign theme of the National Opposition Union (UNO), a conglomerate of 14 groups and political parties ranging from conservatives to Communists...

...But she never has a stock of more than two or three pieces of the same item, and that makes it hard to build up a steady trade...

...dollars...

...They realize they lost because of economic conditions and will now do all they can to undermine confidence in UNO, he said, cautioning that Nicaragua "is going to be a minefield...

...MAYORGA'S RECOVERY PLAN Nicaragua Turns to Economics BY ANNA HUSARSKA Managua A few days after the presidential election last February 25, Nicaragua's newspapers carried yet another official "Communicado" announcing the changing face of a bank note...

...Anna Husarska, deputy foreign editor of the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, is a frequent New Leader contributor...

...and his brother-in-law, an agronomist specializing in ecology, who is a night guard in Miami...

...She has dreamed about having thousands of "Old Spice deodorants" available, and since she has family in the States, plans to arrange such a shipment...

...It is to be expected that the budget will improve thanks to taxing FSLN-owned enterprises and those belonging to the Front's members...

...The UNO plan does target the Front's practices: "The tariffs will be changed so as to eliminate privileges and so that leaders and functionaries who do not pay their electricity, water and phone bills will pay their dues...

...This had halted investments, credits and imports from the U. S., and had deprived Nicaragua of a vital market for its coffee, cotton and sugar...

...Mayorga firmly dismissed the talk of peasants being evicted from the parcels they have been given...

...Mayorga thinks many of Nicaragua's 350,000 émigrés should return home to contribute to the rebuilding of their country...

...Hyperinflation—which in 1988 reached 36,000 per cent, and in 1989 dropped to "only" 1,700 per cent—is merely one indicator of the catastrophic economic situation the government of victorious Violeta Barrios de Chamorro will inherit when she takes office next April 25...

...His work forms the core of the scheme UNO wants to implement to undo the structural damage done during the past decade...

...But it is the one voters were most sensitive to as they went to the polls to tell the ruling Sandinista Front of National Liberation (FSLN) that its days were numbered...

...Rather, to stimulate business ventures, private "finance houses" are to be appended to the state financial institutions, and the state will issue foreign trade licenses to qualifying firms...

...Another woman on the Mercado, Marta Ulloa, told me she gets the cosmetics she sells from travelers to Guatemala, Honduras or Costa Rica...

...Even before he left here on March 2 in quest of $300 million from Washington, he was encouraged by the reports that the Bush Administration had agreed to lift the trade embargo imposed on Nicaragua in 1985...