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José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 24
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Thanks to a decrease in the price of gasoline, the cost of living in January rose just 0.04 percent. The figure comes from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos that surveys prices of 292 goods and services. The steep decline in motor fuel masked the fact that the actual increase in the cost of living was greater. Some 59 percent of the goods and services surveyed showed increases, the institute said. By comparison, the inflation rate for 2014 was 5.13 percent. The rate from February 2014 to last month is 4.39 percent, said the institute. Lawmakers OK San Ramón financing plan By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Lawmakers have approved a trust arrangement to provide financing for the proposed San José- San Ramón highway. There were no negative votes. The measure authorizes the executive branch to create the trust, called a fideicomiso in Spanish, to capture financing from any sources available. The proposal also calls for the reconstruction of the General Cañas and Bernardo Soto highways from the current six to eight lanes to Juan Santamaría airport. After that the highway will be six lanes where it is now two lanes in some parts. The road project originally was granted as a concession, but residents along the route protested vigorously that the proposed tolls would be too high. The Laura Chinchilla administration payed off the concession holder. The new design is around $440 million, although the agreement approved Tuesday does not give a number. The measure needs one more positive vote to go to the president for signatures. Florencio del Castillo project advances By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A legislative committee has approved and sent to the full body a proposal to link the Autopista Florencio del Castillo with the Zapote traffic circle. The 2.9 kilometer stretch would be from Curridabat. The proposal also envisions widening the highway to six lanes for some 17.6 kilometers. The highway is the one that runs from Curridabat to Cartago. The committee said that the way to finance the project was with a trust, a fideicomiso. The stretch from Curridabat to Zapote would relieve pressure on the main highway through San Pedro and Curridabat. Police prepared for new school year By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Fuerza Pública has a new emphasis on prevention when public schools open Monday for the new year. The director of the police agency, Juan José Andrade, said that officers will be on the alert for the usual crimes and violations, but they also will be watching out for bullying. There also will be stepped up efforts against drug use, he said. More than a million youngsters are expected to start school, and police will be stationed in key areas to keep watch. Also involved with the the traffic police. Meanwhile there is a last-minute rush to obtain certification for school transports. These have to be renewed each year. Transport ministry officials usually ask parents to be on the alert to make sure that vehicles transporting their children have all the approvals. Stepfather held in child's death By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A 2 year old died from what appears to be injuries to his face, back and chest. Investigators have detained the stepfather, who has been remanded to jail for investigation. The death happened in La Virgen de los Chiles near the Nicaraguan border Monday. The Fuerza Pública said that the mother made the complaint. N.Y. commuter train-SUV crash kills 7 By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Seven people are dead after a crowded commuter train traveling from New York City struck a vehicle that was stuck on the tracks. The collision occurred Tuesday evening about 20 kilometers north of New York as the Metro-North Railroad train was headed to the small town of Wassaic. Authorities say the sport utility vehicle had gotten stuck on the tracks after going through a railway crossing. The train pushed the car about 10 train lengths before both vehicles caught fire. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters the driver of the SUV and six passengers were killed in the collision. At least a dozen passengers were injured. The Metro-North Railroad has been plagued by a series of crashes in recent years, including a derailment in 2013 that left four commuters dead. A report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board last year was highly critical of the rail line, which carries hundreds of thousands of commuters daily between New York and Connecticut.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 24 | |
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| Name change to Quepos gets final approval in legislature |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Lawmakers passed for the second and final time Tuesday a bill that changes the name of the canton of Aguirre to Quepos. The city of Quepos is the major community in the canton. The central Pacific canton now bears the name of a casualty in the 1948 civil war. The word Quepos is believed to be the |
name of a
native tribe that inhabited the area before the Spanish arrival. The measure got first approval Thursday. Now it goes to President Luis Guillermo Solís for his signature. Lawmakers said that the name change was supported by business and tourism groups in the canton. |
| Security minister named to high position in the
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The security minister, Celso Gamboa Sánchez, is going to
Jorge Chavarría Guzmán, the fiscal general confirmed in an |
email that
Gamboa would be joining the agency Feb. 16. In the Costa Rican system, the prosecutors and the judicial investigators are within the court system. Gamboa has been in the Ministerio de Seguridad since 2011, although not all that time as minister. He is an expert at public relations and maintains an active twitter account that is consulted by reporters. He also has been director of the Dirección de Inteligencia y Seguridad Nacional. President Luis Guillermo Solís praised him Tuesday for the work he has done. As security minister, Gamboa supervised the Fuerza Pública and other similar police agencies, including frontier police, airport police and anti-drug agents. His office produced a detailed list Tuesday of successes during his tenure. He has a degree in criminology as well as a law degree and has served as a prosecutor in the past. |
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| Execution by fire of Jordanian pilot generates outrage and
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Jordan executed two militants at dawn today because the Islamic State killed one of its pilots. The militants included Sajida al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman who was on death row for her role in a 2005 suicide bombing in Amman. The Islamic State had demanded she be released. Jordanian authorities executed her a day after a video emerged online appearing to show the militant group burning Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh alive while he was locked in a cage. He was captured after his plane went down in Syria in late December while flying as part of the U.S.-led coalition conducting air strikes against the Islamic State group. He was apparently killed on Jan. 3. Late Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said U.S. officials have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the video. Jordan had insisted the militants provide evidence al-Kaseasbeh was alive before they released the al-Rishawi woman in a prisoner exchange. A grim-looking Jordanian King Abdullah addressed the nation from Washington, where he had been meeting with U.S. leaders. The king was reported to be cutting his U.S. visit short to return to Amman, where people were taking to the streets in protest after learning of the pilot's death, shouting angrily and chanting his name as they called for revenge on Islamic State militants. "This is cowardly terror by a criminal group that has no |
relation to
Islam," the king told his people. "The brave pilot gave his life defending his faith, country and nation and joined other Jordanian martyrs." Jordan's participation in coalition air strikes against fellow Muslims has been unpopular within the country. Kaseasbeh was captured in December after his fighter jet crashed near Raqqa, Syria, the de facto capital of the extremist militant organization's proclaimed Islamic caliphate. President Barack Obama, who met with King Abdullah Tuesday, called the video just one more indication of the Islamic State's viciousness and barbarity. "And it, I think, will redouble the vigilance and determination on the part of a global coalition to make sure that they are degraded and ultimately defeated," the president told reporters. "Whatever ideology they're operating off of, it's bankrupt." Vice President Joseph Biden hosted Jordan's King Abdullah at the Naval Observatory Tuesday in Washington, D.C., where he offered condolences to Kasasbeh's family and all Jordanians before condemning the killings and calling for the release of all prisoners held by Islamic State militants. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the campaign against the militants, issued a statement Tuesday saying Kaseasbeh served his country courageously and honorably and was an important member of the anti-Islamic State team. U. N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the pilot's murder and said Islamic State is a terrorist group with no regard for human life. |
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| Senate subcommittee hears divergent views on Cuba By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Obama administration has defended its diplomatic opening with Cuba before U.S. lawmakers who are deeply divided on the issue. It remains unclear whether the new, Republican-led Congress will assist or hinder the president’s initiative to normalize relations with Havana. Congress has been abuzz about Cuba since President Obama’s December announcement restoring official diplomatic ties between Washington and Havana with congressional delegations jetting to and from the island. Fully normalizing relations, however, is far from a done deal, as Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs, told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee. “We have only just begun the official talks on normalizing relations, which will take considerably longer than the first step of the reestablishment of relations, "said Ms. Jacobson. Lawmakers fiercely debate the wisdom of this effort. Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat and a Cuban-American, said he doubts diplomacy and trade will bring change to the island. “I do not want to relive 50 years of engagement with China that has brought forced abortions, prison camp labor, ethnic cleansing in Tibet, the exile of the Dalai Lama. If that is what we hope for the Cuban people, it is a sad day," said Menendez. Fellow Cuban-American Marco Rubio, a Republican, says no ties should be restored until the Castro government agrees to democratic reform. “The Cuban people are the only people in this hemisphere that have not had a free and fair election in the last decade-and-a-half. And the notion that we should be more patient with Cuba than all these other societies is unfair and offensive," said Rubio. By contrast, Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, noted that restoring ties with Havana does not confer an American seal of approval on the Cuban government. Fellow Democrat Barbara Boxer agreed. “We know this policy is not going to change Cuba overnight, but we have spent the past five decades pursuing a policy that has not worked," said Sen. Boxer. Tomasz Malinowski sought to assure senators that U.S. officials in talks with the Castro government are not blind to realities in Cuba. He is the assistant secretary of State for democracy and human rights. “We have no illusions about the current leadership’s desire to keep things just as they are," said Malinowski. But Malinowski predicted that boosting diplomacy and trade with the island will force the Cuban government to reckon with its failures. “Every citizen of Cuba knows that the U.S. is willing to have normal relations with their country and help them connect with the world. These steps have raised the Cuban people’s expectations and shifted the burden for meeting those expectations to the Cuban state," he said. Ending the longstanding U.S. trade embargo on Cuba would require an act of Congress, something that is viewed as unlikely in the foreseeable future. Of more immediate concern is whether Congress will approve funds to maintain a full U.S. embassy in Havana, if and when relations are normalized. Senators also heard from prominent Cuban human rights activists. Miriam Leiva, a journalist and wife of the late Cuban dissident Oscar Espinosa Chepe, said the United States has a unique opportunity to push Cuba towards a brighter future, something that can only be accomplished by being there. Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of the late Cuban pro-democracy activist Oswaldo Paya, said, “Engagement will only be real if it occurs between free peoples.” U.S. 2016 budget considered to be unrealistic and pricey By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Coming in at 2,000 pages, the 2016 federal budget is a fiscal road map for President Barack Obama’s remaining two years and beyond. Its aim: to bolster the U.S. recovery, keep America safe and invest in the middle class. But at nearly $4 trillion, it carries a hefty price tag. It includes $561 billion in military spending, $478 billion for public works projects, $526 billion in nonmilitary spending, plus assorted tax cuts for the middle class and free community college for students. Economist Diane Lim at the Committee for Economic Development in Washington said that although the plan is commendable, it's also unrealistic. “I have no problem with the investment, and I think, in fact, our nation does not invest enough in things that will promote longer term economic growth," she said. "It’s just that we have to come up with realistic ways to pay for it. Otherwise, those investments are never going to happen.” The budget proposes more than $2 trillion in tax hikes over the next 10 years, mostly on corporations and the wealthy to help pay for these initiatives. But Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are unlikely to accept them. As it stands, the budget would also add another $6 trillion to the national debt by 2026. "So if you go out a decade later or two decades later, after the end of the 10-year budget window, we still haven’t done anything to figure out how are we going to keep health care costs down so that Medicare spending as a share of GDP doesn’t keep rising so dramatically,” Ms. Lim said. That should worry investors, Ms. Lim said, because the world's largest economy is only as good as its financial health. But in testimony before Congress Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said that not only is the U.S. economy growing at a sustainable level, it's also doing better than those of most other countries. "The fact is our businesses created nearly 3 million jobs last year, the most jobs since the late '90s," he said. "From a global perspective, we continue to outperform our trading partners, many of whom are still trying to climb out of the vast hole created by the global economic crisis." Congress and the president must still agree on the budget before it can become law, and unless the two sides have the political will to deal with the nation’s expensive health care and retirement programs and its unsustainable high debt, Ms. Lim said, the spending plan isn't going anywhere. "Very, very little of it will pass," she said. "I can guarantee you that.” Falling oil prices hitting some Texas workers By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Oil rig workers, known as roughnecks, face unemployment as oil prices fall, but the impact is greater in regions like Alaska and North Dakota, where production costs are higher than they are in the Eagle Ford shale area of south-central Texas. Business has even picked up at Rooster Safety in Pleasanton, Texas, where roughnecks buy gloves, helmets and protective gear. Store owner James Strange said he'd been getting orders from company purchasing agents who were content with paying more to established suppliers when oil prices were high. “Now that oil prices are dropping and people want to watch their budgets, they are willing to take an extra 30 minutes to create an account with us so that they can start purchasing and save some money,” he said. By keeping costs low, some projects in south-central Texas can remain profitable as long as the price of oil stays above $40 a barrel. Economist Adam Perdue at the University of Houston's Institute for Regional Forecasting, who studies the impact of the slowdown on Texas, said that “exploration and production budgets are being cut anywhere from 10 to 50 percent, with most of them being about 30 percent.” He said Houston's economy, which experienced 5 percent growth in recent years, would be affected by the lower spending. “We are predicting there will be 20,000 fewer jobs than there would have been otherwise," Perdue said. "So, we are still predicting growth in the Houston area. It is just going to slow down to a more reasonable rate of just under 2 percent.” The slowdown will also affect companies that make pipes and fittings for oil exploration and production, as well as trucking companies that supply sand and chemicals for hydraulic fracturing and many other small businesses that serve the energy industry. But low oil prices are a stimulus to chemical producers that use hydrocarbons to make everything from solvents to fertilizer and plastics. Perdue said new chemical plant construction near Houston would keep many skilled workers employed. “A lot of these roughnecks that are going to lose their jobs out there in the field are going to be able to come home and get a welding job or a construction job,” he said. Perdue said oil company analysts see prices rising again in six months or so as the market glut from expanded production decreases. But, he said, if those assumptions are wrong and oil prices continue to fall, the impact on Houston and Texas in general will be much worse. China takes more steps to insulate Web population By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A recent move by Beijing to block access to several VPN services has angered some Chinese free speech activists who use the tools to get around China’s formidable Internet firewalls. But now some analysts worry the move may signal a much larger and longer-lasting crackdown that could seriously cramp the Communist nation’s struggling economy. Users in China of several VPN services, among them VyprVPN, Astrill and StrongVPN, began reporting they were being blocked from accessing those services on the Internet. VPN’s, or virtual private networks, are used to bypass Internet censorship and filtering. In recent years, VPNs have proven very popular in China, not just among free speech activists but with many firms conducting international business from China. In a Twitter message to its users, Astrill confirmed the blocks, but said only iOS devices, such as iPads and iPhones, appeared to be targeted. Over at its company blog, Golden Frog, the firm behind VyprVPN, also confirmed the new blocks, saying that it "appears that China is using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to analyze plain-text Web traffic through the Great Firewall." In response, the company is now using the encrypted HTTPS protocol to help bypass China’s DPI filters. "The authorities have been doing this for a long time," writes the pseudonymous Charlie Smith of the GreatFire.org censorship monitoring site in an email. "But they have never done it as extensively as they are doing it now." Smith said his group has been monitoring a rapid ramping up of Internet controls in China since June of 2014, and that blocking VPNs -- which the government has mostly ignored up to this point -- is just the next logical step to tighten control. "Google got blocked completely last June for the first time. Gmail got blocked completely for the first time in December," he wrote. "Since October, the authorities have launched attacks on Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Apple, putting sensitive user information at risk and, in turn, making Chinese netizens suspicious of using foreign services. "All of that activity drives Internet users to adopt circumvention tools," he wrote. "By blocking these tools, the authorities are leaving people no option but to use domestic services." Services, he adds, that can easily be monitored, filtered or cut off entirely. In a written statement, the U.S. State Department urged authorities in Beijing to lift the blocks and open up a freer Internet. "We remain deeply concerned by Chinese government efforts to restrict the free flow of information both offline and online, including the continued blocking of foreign media Web sites and search engines," the statement said. "Such actions run counter to China’s international commitments to protect freedom of expression." However, the South China Morning Post reports that at a Beijing news conference Jan. 27, Wen Ku, communication development director at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that new technologies, such as VPNs, make it entirely appropriate for the government to take whatever steps deemed necessary to filter out inappropriate information from reaching those online in China. There are hundreds of VPN services, but overall they all work the same way. A VPN creates what’s commonly called a tunnel -- a point-to-point, encrypted connection between a user's computer and a particular set of servers associated with that VPN service. This tunnel allows users to generally access the sites they wish while hiding their location and identity. VPNs are effective but not foolproof, and generally can be blocked in two ways. First, governments can block access to the servers associated with a VPN, which is why some VPNs use a constantly shifting set of servers across different continents. Second, as happened at Golden Frog, the Web sites of VPN companies can simply be blocked, preventing users from ever downloading a service in the first place. Internet censorship in China is nothing new, dating back as far as 1998 and the introduction of what’s often termed "The Great Firewall of China." What’s of concern to some analysts now is not only that VPNs are being targeted, but more and more Web sites are being blocked long-term. "The government in China has consistently attempted to monitor the Internet and restrict social media in China, which is growing by leaps and bounds," said Michael Auslin, scholar in residence at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on Asian politics and security. "This is a particularly sensitive time for the government, one in which the consolidation of power by Xi Jinping is taking on some very sensitive sacred cows, at low and high levels," Auslin said. "This is not a time when the government wants to lose control of the national debate. They long ago learned the lesson of the Soviet Union. China wants to maintain political and social control and allow economic reform. That’s the opposite of what the Soviets did and, of course, they collapsed," he added. Internet and social media use in China is exploding. The micro-blogging site Sina Weibo alone has over 500 million users. As authorities have broadened the number of sites being blocked, Chinese netizens have found new ways around the firewall, including using cloud services like Amazon S3, which have become critical for many Chinese businesses to make money. Blocking those services, said GreatFire's Smith, creates economic collateral damage for Chinese business, which in turn increases pressure on China’s leaders to loosen their grip on the Web. A few analysts have begun raising the possibility that China may eventually follow Iran’s lead and try to build its own intranet, walling off nearly the entire global Internet to all but a select few in that nation. Security expert Auslin agrees that might actually happen someday but probably not anytime soon. "One of the biggest problems is it would be disruptive, and that’s not something the government right now wants," he said. "There’s already an economic slowdown, so the government clearly does not want any economic uncertainty or instability." That said, Auslin agrees with Smith and others that this most recent action blocking VPNs further reinforces China’s apparent desire to seize as much control of the Internet as possible, and that officials may be seriously considering creating a de facto intranet through heavy filtering and censorship. “There certainly is the potential that if they felt they could get away with it, and they felt it would not harm business, they would probably go ahead and do it,” he said. British Parliament gives OK to blocking inherited diseases By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Britain could become the first country in the world to allow the creation of babies with DNA from three people. The House of Commons voted 382 to 128 to approve the controversial type of in-vitro fertilization that could prevent mothers from passing inherited health problems such as serious heart and brain disorders and muscular dystrophy. But critics see it as a step toward creation of designer babies. The treatment is known as three-parent in vitro fertilization because the babies, born from genetically modified embryos, would have DNA from a mother, a father and from a female donor. It is designed to help families with mitochondrial diseases, incurable conditions passed down the maternal line that affect around one in 6,500 children worldwide. After an emotionally charged 90-minute debate that some lawmakers criticized as being too short for such a serious matter, parliament voted 382 to 128 in favor of the technique, called mitochondrial donation. The vote paves the way for a medical world first for Britain, but one that is fiercely disputed by some religious groups and other critics. The process involves intervening in the fertilization process to remove mitochondria, which act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells, and which, if faulty, can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy. Mitochondrial DNA is separate from DNA found in the cell nucleus and does not affect human characteristics such as hair or eye color, appearance or personality traits. "I for one would be absolutely certain I wouldn't stand here and defend the concept of designer babies — choosing the color of the eyes and all the rest of it. This is about purely dealing with those terrible, terrible illnesses," opposition Labor lawmaker Andrew Miller, chair of parliament's science and technology committee, said during the debate. The Roman Catholic Church, which is opposed to any artificial reproductive techniques, opposes the British proposal, as does the Church of England, which said last week there has not been enough scientific study of the medical techniques involved. International charities, advocacy groups and scientists had urged Britain to pass laws to allow the treatment, saying it brought a first glimmer of hope for some families of having a baby who could live without suffering. "We have finally reached a milestone in giving women an invaluable choice, the choice to become a mother without fear of passing on a lifetime under the shadow of mitochondrial disease to their child," Robert Meadowcroft, chief executive of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, said following the vote. In an open letter to lawmakers, 11 international campaign groups, including the U.S. United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, described the condition as unimaginably cruel. "It strips our children of the skills they have learned, inflicts pain that cannot be managed and tires their organs one by one until their little bodies cannot go on any more," they wrote. Lawmakers were given a free vote on the issue, and Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman said the British leader had voted to support it, adding it was not about playing God. "He has a particular sympathy with those parents whose children are born with very serious illnesses, that in nearly all cases end their lives prematurely," the spokesman said, referring to Cameron's son Ivan who suffered from cerebral palsy and severe epilepsy and died aged 6 in 2009. Critics, however, say the technique will lead to the creation of genetically modified designer babies, with Conservative lawmaker Fiona Bruce saying it would amount to letting the genie out of the bottle. "Where will it lead? The answer has to be that we stop here. The answer has to be that we say this is a red line in our country, as in every other country in the world, that we will not cross," she said during the debate. Proposed new laws allowing the treatments to be carried out in Britain still have to be approved by the upper house, which commentators expect to endorse parliament's support. |
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Murdered
archbishop declared martyr
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Assassinated Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero has been declared a
Romero died the day after he gave a sermon calling on Salvadoran soldiers to stop carrying out orders of the leaders. This was at the height of the civil war in that country in which the U.S. backed government set up death squads and engaged in many human rights abuses. Press group condemns disrespect of paper Special to A.M. Costa Rica
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has condemned an act of aggression by the chief of staff of Argentine’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner who tore up pages of the newspaper Clarín during a public meeting held at the government headquarters in protest at articles written by three of the paper’s journalists. Association President Gustavo Mohme, editor of the Lima, Peru, newspaper La República, said he regretted that “the President Kirchner’s government involves the press in an alleged political confrontation, discrediting the media as political opponents, instead of regarding them as an instrument watching over those in power as occurs in democratic societies.” Monday during a press conference in which he complained of a political confrontation by opposition media Chief of Staff Jorge Capitanich in front of television cameras tore up two pages of Clarín which on Sunday had published articles about the death of public prosecutor Alberto Nisman written by reporters Nicolás Wiñazki and Daniel Santoro and columnist Eduardo van de Kooy in which there was a reference to alleged statements made by Capitanich about the coverage by the press of Nisman’s death. The chairman of the association's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, declared, “It is a disgrace that President Kirchner and her closest collaborators fall into the despicable practice that is frequently and enthusiastically engaged in by Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, one of the worst predators of freedom of expression in the Americas.” He added that the Argentine government “should not fall into the temptation of accusing and discrediting journalists in public acts of sarcasm, as bellicose and confrontational speeches tend to incite violence.” Mohme and Paolillo said that this act of disrespect of the press “cannot be taken lightly, when in Argentina regrettably journalists have exposed to other governmental actions that go against freedom of the press, such as cases of spying on the media, symbolic trials of journalists and acts of violence.” |
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| From Page 7: Salaries for bank employees under study By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The executive branch wants a report from state banks on how they pay their employees. The request, in the form of a directive, comes after the Contraloría General de la República, reported that bank employees were getting salary incentives that were disproportionate. The directive asked the banks to provide within a month the criteria being used to evaluate managers and to outline how salary incentives are determined. The executive branch, the Ministerio de Hacienda and the Banco Central will study these responses to determine the impact they have on development, according to the directive. |
