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PRESS RELEASE


Ecuador's Correa:
`Without Public Banking,
There Can Be No Development'

June 3, 2007 (EIRNS)—"The government of the citizen revolution understands perfectly that without public banking there can be no development," Ecuador's President Rafael Correa stated May 25 as he announced the revitalization of the National Finance Corporation (CFN), whose specific purpose will be to extend credit for productive purposes. In fact, Correa underscored, "there is no country in the world that has developed without public banking."

As reported on his Presidential website, Correa pointed out that the CFN was founded 43 years ago, specifically to channel credit into industrial development. For 10 years, he noted, it functioned as "the primary motor" of Ecuador's industrial development. But at the end of the 1990s, he explained, Ecuador was smashed by a process of "economic destabilization" unleashed by neoliberalism. The economy was looted and saddled with illegal debt and financial manipulation. The CFN virtually disappeared because "the secular hegemony of the financial markets destroyed Ecuador's development banks," Correa said.

But today, he stated, that era of neoliberalism is over. Gone are the days when government authorities connived with local businessmen to buy favors from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The funding of the CFN with resources from the Special Account for Productive and Social Reactivation (CEREPS) "will help to reposition the CFN and return it to its original role." Correa told his audience, "you can always count on our support. The public development banks and the government of the revolution will join in assigning" the necessary resources, and breathe life into the CFN.

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