The discourse of crisis promoted in the first two years of the Moreno government (2017-18) was a political strategy designed to create distance from the administration of his predecessor Rafael Correa. But its overemphasis on the fiscal deficit was inconsistent with the reality of the macroeconomic situation, and the economic policy stemming from it sidelined important concerns over productive capacity in favour of providing benefits to new allies in the private sector, writeKatiuska King (Central University of Ecuador) and Pablo Samaniego (Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador).
Although Ecuador’s current president Lenin Moreno was elected under the auspices of his predecessor Rafael Correa’s political movement (PAIS Alliance), once in office he distanced himself from Correa by allying with business sectors and the political right while promoting a discourse of “exposing” failures of the previous model. As we discuss in our recent article for Ecuador Debate, this affected public perceptions of the economy in ways that justified a shift towards austerity, but the reality of economic policymaking also created many winners amongst his new allies.
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