Economists Ottón Solís, legislator and founder of the Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC), Eli Feinzaig and William Hayden believe the government of Luis Guillermo Solís was irresponsible when handling the fiscal crisis: it increased public spending, lost time and now talks about the lack of liquidity.
The president said on national television on August 1st that the government faces liquidity difficulties to pay its obligations and guarantee the operation of essential services.
Despite all the public calls and efforts we have made since the beginning of my mandate to contain expenses and increase revenues, there is still a gap that we must close with fresh resources,”
was one of his affirmations.
[The President] went from not worrying about the deficit to considering it a tragedy; from promoting projects for municipalities and PANI to increase annual spending by ¢65 billion and ¢48 billion respectively (all financed with more deficits) to been alarmed due to excessive spending; from promoting substantive reforms in sales and rent to lobbying for a ‘light’ reform, and then to endowing the original reform with urgency; from squandering on image, propaganda and travels, to noticing the are difficulties to finance the operation of essential services,”
wrote Otton Solís in an article published on Sunday by La Nación .
Feinzaig said that the measures announced by the ruler are “cynical” and disguise the underlying problem: high government spending. He believes that if the government has liquidity problems it is due to the enormous irresponsibility of having increased the 2015 budget by 19%, followed by another 6% in 2016.
Similarly, Hayden said that
the irresponsibility of spending growth began in the Arias government with Keynesian policies to battle the effects of the global economic and financial crisis that started in 2008 (…) Chinchilla’s administration continued the spending increase [and] President Solís continued to squander.”