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EL SALVADOR IN FINANCIAL TROUBLE, PRESIDENT ANTONIO SACA SUPPLICATES THE LEFT.

Article Excerpt
El Salvador's conservative Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA) government has come to a rare agreement with the opposition Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN). The parties have agreed to negotiate approval of international loans that President Antonio Saca needs to avert a financial crisis. Some believe the crisis has already begun, others, that there is still time to head it off. But most agree that what is in the offing is something similar to what happened in Argentina four years ago, an epic economic meltdown.

Saca responded to the FMLN agreement to talk with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. "I appreciate that we are going down a good road," he said. "Just the fact that we will sit and talk is good news."

But just talk could be all he ends up with. The FMLN's president of the legislative treasury committee, Gerson Martinez, warned that the road would be a bumpy one and that the fiscal situation in the country "is already taking us to a process of Argentinization. That is to say, a Salvadoran corralito, with the disadvantage that our recovery will not be as immediate as Argentina's."

Corralito was...

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