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The discovery of the abuses suffered by more than a hundred peasants in the Furakawa Plantaciones CA Ecuador farms “Subhuman” working conditions, without drinking water, electricity and sanitation. Working hours of more than 10 hours without contracts or social security. Overcrowding, Child labor, Mutilations due to the unsafe use of agricultural machinery. These are just some of the...
A month before leaving the presidency of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno leaves a signature piece of legislation, the “Law for the defense of dollarization,” as a sort of inheritance for incoming president-elect Guillermo Lasso in the elections, a law that is vital for Ecuador to continue accessing international loans. The Law was passed by the...
I’m sitting in the Sheraton Hotel in Cuenca in preparation of my flight out in the morning to Quito, and then from there to the Miami, Florida. As you all know, I’m going to go get my COVID vaccine(s), and I’m also going to go spend some overdue time with my mother. It’s hard...
The Central bank of Ecuador (ECB) reported that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Ecuador was $1.0169 billion in 2020. Despite the fact that it was a pandemic year, and in most countries in the region there were falls compared to the previous year, the figure for Ecuador reveals a slight recovery compared to the FDI registered...
I just returned from the US yesterday. En route, I learned that my friend Jeff Salz had died of covid-19. I’m shocked and heartbroken. First let me say this: I am honored to have been able to call Jeff Salz my friend. He was a better man than me, and to have him consider...
While I’m here in the US, Ecuador is bracing for another possible shutdown, is struggling to get the vaccines it needs, and is seeing the numbers of new deaths from the virus rise to levels first seen over a year ago. All the while, the US announced today that more than half of the...
Ecuador has penal reforms for police officers and prison guides on the subject and regulations for the military, the application of which is being analyzed by the CC. The Government is seeking, through a single organic law, to regulate the progressive use of force in all security institutions: National Police, complementary security entities of...
The president-elect has said that he will present his reform on the night of his first day in office. President-elect Guillermo Lasso’s first announcement on tax mattes has gathered both support and questions. Analysts, experts and the representatives of the business sector feel the topic needs to be raised, but all agree that tax cuts...
On an economic scale, the pandemic year can be baptized as the year of debt, both because of its growth and because of the importance it represented in the movement of the economy. The public debt of Ecuador grew by 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With the health crisis came the paralysis of economic activity...
Scientists were able to confirm the existence of a new species of lion monkey in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where it was believed until now that only one existed, reported the San Francisco de Quito University (USFQ). The study has been ongoing since 2015 by Stella de la Torre, professor and researcher at the USFQ College of Biological...
The presidential candidate of the conservative alliance CREO-PSC, Guillermo Lasso, was declared the winner of the elections held this Sunday in Ecuador, when with 97.79% of the tally sheets counted, he obtained 52.50% of the votes, five points over his correista rival Andrés Arauz. “Ecuadorians have chosen a new course, very different from the...
Well, I did it. I booked a flight back to the US to get a COVID-19 vaccine shot. Actually, two shots, three weeks apart. I had signed up for the vaccine in Florida, which is my legal residence, and really didn’t expect to see anything happen soon, as the entire vaccination program in the...
After one week, the Ministry of Health has decided to discontinue providing an Appendix that was meant to provide further insight into the daily Infographic Report. As we pointed out last week, there was little in the sense of new or valuable information in the Appendix provided. Two data points they did provide are...
Well, I’ve been in the US for a week, and I can’t say that it has been as enjoyable as I imagined it would be. Because frankly, I am mentally in what I can best describe as an alternate reality. Really, being back in the US is very odd for me this time. Perhaps...
Last week, the Mayor of Cuenca issued a letter to Ecuador’s two final Presidential candidates for the April 11th election. Pedro Palacios, Mayor of Cuenca, issued a statement on his official social media accounts to make requests to the two candidates who will contest the ballot: Andrés Arauz and Guillermo Lasso. Among the requests, he...
To acquire this type of housing, considered easy to mobilize and ranging from $ 10,000 to $ 15,000, you must have a space or land. In the last decade, containers have become a new architectural element in Ecuador, used to build, under a new concept, different spaces for real estate purposes. Among the main...
The restrictions due to COVID-19, as well as the lack of control of cases here, are causing several countries to block entry of those coming from Ecuador, in some cases regardless of vaccination or PCD test status. Over the last several months, the restrictions for entering countries throughout the world have increased. They are being...
Since the beginning of the year, the epidemiological curve of the Ministry of Health graphs has registered an increase in cases, which has caused hospital centers to become saturated, mainly in Quito and Guayaquil, but also in other locations in the country as well. Given this, the cantonal and national COE issued restrictions for...
Ayampe’s natural landscapes – strewn with rolling hills, healthy forests, and screaming birds – bear a certain resemblance to those settings that Jenica Brigham has as happy memories of her childhood in Hawaii, where she lived from the age of 3 until she was 20 years old. Because of this, when she discovered southern Manabi province a decade ago,...
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a rambling, thoughts off the top of my head column, but there are so many little ideas wigging inside my brain that I can’t quite scratch away, that I just have to let them out. Let me start with the election here, because it really is...
The current level of social inequality in Ecuador is now just slightly lower than it was in December 2010—a ten-year setback according to the latest figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC) published this week. One of the parameters to measure social inequality is how income is distributed within a society. In Ecuador,...
The Presidential Debate organized by the National Electoral Council (CNE) was held this past Sunday, March 21, 2021. The candidates to occupy the seat in Carondelet, Andrés Arauz, of the Unión por la Esperanza (Unes); and Guillermo Lasso, from the alliance of the Creando Oportunidades movement – Christian Social Party (Creo-PSC), both spoke about...
When I was young, I used to love to play those scratch-off lottery tickets. My heart rate would actually go up when I was scraping off those little silver spots of foil (?), just the anticipation of winning something was almost worth the $1. [Now my heart rate goes up if I cross the...
Friends here keep asking me what I think about the future of Ecuador, with the likelihood that Andres Arauz will win the April 11th Presidential run-off election. All I can tell them is that from what I read, Arauz will return the country to the ways of Rafael Correa—and this means a return to...
The massacre in three prisons in Ecuador, which occurred on February 23rd, reflects “a high level of corruption in the prison system and the power of drug trafficking within and without,” says Colonel Mario Pazmiño, former director of intelligence for the army. The massacre left 79 dead in the prisons of Guayaquil (37), Turi...
On February 8th, President Lenín Moreno sent his first version of the bill for the Defense of Dollarization to the National Assembly. This bill would reform the Organic Monetary and Financial Code (Comyf). The President asked that this initiative be treated as an “Urgent Economic Law.” When the bill was submitted, the Ministry of...
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, public institutions have varied in their schedules and forms of care. Below, is a list of public entities with high user demand and the detail of their current form of care in Cuenca Internal Revenue Service (SRI) For a...
Last week, the Legislative Administration Council (CAL) of the Assembly sent the bill for the Defense of Dollarization back to the President because it had constitutional and legal errors. The corrected version of the text will be back in the hands of the Assembly this week. El Universo newspaper interviewed Verónica Artola, the manager...
In a late session yesterday, the National Electoral Council (CNE) cancelled the vote recount that had been agreed to between the two second place finishers in the February 6th election, and CNE President Diane Atamaint. The planned recount was to have started on Monday after a weekend of back-and-forth discussions between the three parties....
Tracking the spread and outcome of the coronavirus in Ecuador: Updated for Tuesday, FEBRUARY 9, 2021 The numbers this week show signs of improvement, even though the rates of sampling and testing have fallen again. The rate of new cases is lower again for the second week in a row, going from 3.95% increase...