“I don’t know anyone reasonable who wants to start the dollarization in Ecuador, we are the vast majority of those who think like this. It is much better to be with a strong currency in the world than to return to a Latin one,” Claudio Roig, a law student who earns a living with small jobs in the veterinary sector, unceremoniously assures EL MUNDO.
The forcefulness of this young man, who is 23 years old, the same as dollarization in Ecuador, confirms his enormous popularity in the country, which has even caused dissenting voices to retreat. One of them, that of andres arauzcandidate for vice president for the Citizen Revolution of the former president Rafael Correa, who had to rectify after advocating a kind of ‘educationalization’ through electronic means. He later acknowledged that the departure of the dollar as the main currency in his country would be “traumatic.”
“For the Correístas, the main criticism of dollarization is the loss of autonomy in their monetary policy. In other words, it is an issue of nationalism,” political scientist John Polga-Hecimovich summarizes for this newspaper when in Argentinaat the southern tip of the continent, there is debate about the advantages and disadvantages of the measure proposed by Javier Miley.
Doubts that do not exist in Ecuador, where seven of the eight candidates who participated in the first round clearly spoke out in favor of the American greenback, which in the last survey obtained an approval percentage close to 89%. At the head of all of them, the moderate Daniel Noboa, who will contest the runoff against the revolutionary Luisa González. He outsider has already presented a four-point plan for the opposite, protecting dollarization, which involves strengthening fiscal discipline, increasing international reserves, promoting internal and external investment and controlling inflation.
“The balance of dollarization is favorable: despite the risks, it has provided stability. It had very positive immediate effects: it stabilized monetary and fiscal conditions, ended the depreciation of the official exchange rate and also ended pressures from the inflation, a recurring problem in the 80s and 90s,” explains Polga-Hecimovich.