On Thursday 17th, the new Minister of Economy of Ecuador, Richard Martinez, held his first press conference as minister and clarified what his first measures will be (he had been appointed the day before). He expressed that his goal will be to stimulate Ecuador’s fiscal sustainability and employment.

On Monday May 14th, president Lenin Moreno accepted the resignation of María Elsa Viteri as head of the economy portfolio and chose Richard Martinez as his new minister. He, with extensive experience in the Ecuadorian private sector, will have the task of managing the economic reactivation program promoted by the Executive. These will be his first steps:

• Make the debt management more transparent. The minister will adopt the recommendations presented by the General Comptroller of the State, to make the management and levels of debt more transparent. He assured that shortly they will present the current indebtedness numbers in Ecuador. It should be noted that in Ecuador, every 60 days, the levels of indebtedness must be published, and this has not happened since January 2018.

• Repeal Decree 1218 and present the urgent economic bill. The minister assured that next Monday 21st he will introduce a draft to repeal Decree 1218, which allowed  all the internal debts to be taken out of the national accounts.. He also said that May 24th he will introduce the urgent economic bill in Congress, when the President reaches its first year as Head of State.