El Salvador and the Swiss city of Lugano have both signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU). The goal of the MOU is to get more people to use bitcoin not only in their own countries but also in states and countries nearby. If you are interested in trading cryptocurrencies or investing in them, you should visit https://www.bit-indexai.net/.
El Salvador’s ambassador to the U.S., Milena Mayorga, spoke at the Plan B Forum in Lugano on Friday. During her speech, she said that Switzerland would open a “bitcoin office” in Lugano. The office would be run by a new Honorary Consul, who would also spread information about bitcoin in the city, Italy, and Europe.
A little more than a year ago, El Salvador was the first to accept bitcoin as a currency. Lugano doesn’t have this kind of position in Switzerland, but it did start Plan B about seven months ago to get more of its 70,000 residents to use bitcoin.
Keep on reading: Paolo Arduino, the CEO of Tether, says that people in Lugano, Switzerland, are using Bitcoin well. Rios clarified that she is interested in her country accepting bitcoin but didn’t commit to specific policies.
Prince Filip of Serbia likes bitcoin and has for a long time. Since hyperinflation happened in his country, he knows how it works. He may have gotten the most applause of the day when he harshly criticized central bank digital currencies (CBDC), calling them the opposite of bitcoin because the government would control almost all of them. He thought it was strange that Rishi Sunak was picked to be the next Prime Minister of the UK because Sunak supported CBDCs.
In the last few decades, its economy has grown slowly. Its GDP will only increase by 3% per year twice from 2000 to 2020. Even so, El Salvador has the most money per person of any country in the area. Still, poverty and inequality have changed a lot in the country.
People living below the poverty line, which is set at USD 5.5 per person per day, have gone from 39 percent in 2007 to 22.3 percent in 2019. From 1995 to 2019, the number of people living in extreme poverty, defined as having less than US$1.9 per day, went from 13% to 1.5%.
El Salvador is the fairest country in Latin America and the Caribbean because it has developed policies that focus on helping the poor and making everyone richer (LAC). The Gini index for the area went from 0.54 in 1998 to 0.38 in 2019. This was the lowest point in the area.
In 2020, 4.6% more people were living in poverty than in 2019. Estimates show that up to 7.6% more people would have been living in poverty if the government hadn’t done anything to stop it. The level of inequality has probably gone up from 0.38 to 0.39.
In 2021, remittances helped consumption and exports, which allowed the economy to return to a growth rate of 10.2%. El Salvador’s economy is expected to grow by 2.4% in 2022 and 2% in 2023. The national campaign to immunize against COVID-19 is going well; by March 2022, 66 percent of the people in El Salvador will be fully vaccinated.
El Salvador still has to deal with several problems, like the fact that it needs to make changes to keep its budget in good shape. Because of what the government did, the COVID-19 crisis didn’t hurt as much as it could have, but it still costs about 15% of the GDP. This, along with low income and steady spending, led to the public debt reaching 90% of GDP.
El Salvador must straighten its finances to get more money and spend it better. This will help the country’s capital stay out of trouble. During this time, it’s also important to protect the country’s economy and the poor. El Salvador might be able to lower the risks of refinancing with the help of a solid fiscal package.
