Between July and September 2022, El Salvador reported a growth of 2.2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared to the same period of the previous year, which in economic terms represents the generation of an additional $682.8 million, that is, a total of $7,887.1 million in those three months, reported the Central Reserve Bank (BCR).
In this sense, the state bank highlighted that one of the drivers of this growth is the revitalization of investment by the public and private sectors, which reported an 11.1% increase in the third quarter of 2022.
“If we look at the growth of the third quarter, investments drove the results obtained during July, August, and September, where exports had an increase of 12.6%, and public and private sector investments 11.1%, compared to last year” , said the president of the BCR, Douglas Rodríguez.
According to the official, these percentages indicate that there were more new projects and expansions between July and September 2022 than the previous year, “that is, it is redirecting resources that were previously allocated to health and are now being allocated to the construction of various investment projects.”
In this sense, Rodríguez also emphasized that the country’s growth rate was led by internal factors, since in addition to investments, items such as exports also reported a rebound of 12.6% and private consumption was favored with a rise of 2.1 %.
“The country is growing through internal means and impulses, and it seems to be resilient to international shocks,” the headline stated, noting that this is due to the measures promoted by the government of President Nayib Bukele to deal with the international economic crisis.
He stressed that, since March, the government has been carrying out maneuvers such as fixing the prices of fuels, propane gas, and electricity, in addition to the suspension of taxes applied to gasoline, to avoid the impact of the escalation of prices in the pockets of Salvadoran families.
In terms of food, the president of the BCR also highlighted the measures aimed at promoting local production and imports, for which various products and agricultural inputs were exempted from customs duties.
These measures allowed the productivity of companies not to decline, and consumption to maintain its pace, and under this scenario, the BCR maintains its growth projection for 2022 of 2.8%, and 3% for this year, but Rodríguez He remarked that based on this estimate “it will be necessary to calculate all those improvements, strategies and public policies that the Bukele government promotes in order to increase the economic growth that it will surely develop.”