'Ecuador soon be out of IMF clutches'

QUITO: The government of leftist President-elect Rafael Correa will pay Ecuador's 33-million-dollar debt to the IMF and then sever credit ties with the financial body, his economy minister said Tuesday.

"We will not sign any letter of intention, or ask for any loan from the IMF," Ricardo Patino, the future economy minister, said in remarks published by the Internet website.

Patino said the Correa government, which takes office Monday, would terminate the country's agreements with the International Monetary Fund once the debt is paid off. "We are going to pay the 33 million dollars, which is the last of what we owe, and we are going to end in this way our credit relation with the Fund," he said.

Ecuador, however, will remain a member nation of the IMF, he said.

Leftist economist Correa announced in December he would renegotiate foreign debt and did not rule out using a moratorium on debt payment, following Argentina's model. Argentina defaulted on its IMF debt five years ago and paid off its entire debt on January 4, 2006.
Correa said the newly available financial resources would be used for social investment, invoking the slogan "life before debt."

In November, Ecuador's public debt amounted to 10.33 billion dollars or 25.3 percent of gross domestic product, the central bank said.

Correa captured 56.6 percent of the November 26 presidential vote, defeating billionaire rival Alvaro Noboa, who took 43.3 percent.

He is one of several left-leaning presidents recently elected in South America and is a close friend of the populist anti-US Venezuela president Hugo Chavez.

From The News.