Ecuador: deepening crisis, floods trigger surge of inflation

According to Maurício Ramírez, professor at the School of Economy and Business Sciences of the University of Espirito Santo, Ecuador is confronting a process of stagflation in which scarcities of basic food items are becoming evident. This has been caused, he said, by the government’s failure to deal with the effects of floods that had wiped out various crops. “It can easily be foreseen that this first quarter will surpass the government’s predictions for annual inflation, basically because of the high cost of food,” said Ramírez.

This inflationary effect, according to most estimates, could take months to stabilize. This is made clear by the soaring prices of basic foodstuffs, such as manioc, whose price has more than doubled, eggs, which went up 50 percent, and rice, which has risen by 14.2 percent