LatinNews Daily - 1 October 2024

*El Salvador’s Finance Minister Jerson Posada has presented the government’s proposed budget for 2025 before the 60-member unicameral legislature. The proposal is for US$9.66bn which the government says reflected a drop of US$970m on the budget estimated for the close of 2024. In line with claims made by authoritarian populist President Nayib Bukele last month, Posada said that for the first time the budget would be self-financing without the need to issue extra debt. The government said that the budget proposal had three key plans: health, education, and security & defence. It said that it would assign US$1.54bn for education; US$1.17bn for health, and US$903.4m for security & defence while US$217.4m was earmarked to finance subsidies, including subsidies for liquid gas (US$114.6m), public transport (US$38.7m), and electricity (US$64.1m). The government claims that since President Bukele first assumed power in 2019, the budget deficit has dropped – from US$1.2bn in 2019 to US$472m in 2023. The budget proposal now goes before the legislature in which Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas (NI) has 54 seats.