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To: JGoren who wrote (23967)	3/10/1999 12:07:00 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

O.T. - what is going on now in Ecuador. (It is bad). March 9, 1999 Ecuador Declares State of Emergency Filed at 7:00 p.m. EST By The Associated Press QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- President Jamil Mahuad declared a 60-day state of emergency in Ecuador on Tuesday amid a deep financial crisis and a looming nationwide strike by powerful leftist-led unions. The decree allows the government to use the military to protect oil and electricity installations, limit public meetings and movement and order strikers back to work. In a government news release Mahuad also announced that the unscheduled banking holidays he had declared for Monday and Tuesday to protect Ecuador's tumbling currency and bank deposits would be extended through Thursday. Government officials said that on Thursday they may announce an economic plan to rescue this tiny Andean nation's economy, which saw its currency, the sucre, lose a quarter its value last week. ''Since several sectors have responded to the economic crisis with illegal work stoppages and calls for strikes that have a serious destabilizing effect, the government has decreed a national state of emergency,'' Interior Minister Vladimiro Alvarez said quoting the decree. Ecuador's largest labor federation has called a national strike for Wednesday and Thursday to protest Mahuad's economic reforms, which have ended fuel subsidies and caused prices to soar. State energy workers have threatened to block the supply of oil and electricity if Congress approves a bill to cut public spending. Protesting Indian groups have already started blocking roads in northern Ecuador. The Defense Ministry on Wednesday issued a communique denying allegations of discontent within the armed forces over the government's response to the economic crisis. Ecuador's bankers have charged that Mahuad was losing control of the economy after he ordered the unscheduled bank holidays. ''At this moment, the government has lost control of the country and must retake control,'' said Carlos Larreategui, president of Ecuador's Association of Private Banks. ''If it doesn't attack the fundamental problems, it would be a catastrophe.'' Business leaders accuse Mahuad of moving too slowly to confront the crisis since he took office in August. Ecuador, with a population of 12 million, is embroiled in its worst economic crisis in the last 20 years due to $2.6 billion in damage from El Nino-powered floods and mudslides last year and falling prices of its main export, oil. Economic growth has fallen to near zero, inflation is running near 50 percent and the budget deficit stands at $1.2 billion. The government had been forced sell dollars in recent months to protect the value of the sucre, draining its scant foreign reserves. On Feb. 12, it abandoned its trading band and allowed the sucre to float freely. But the sucre plunged as investors have begun to doubt Mahuad's ability to overcome political opposition and implement the drastic austerity measures experts say Ecuador's statist economy needs. Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company