The Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy (MEFCCA), one of Rosario Murillo’s flagship entities, failed miserably, but the vice-dictator wants to hide her ruin, that of the institution, and has proceeded to create two entities that will replace the functions of that government agency that for years was managed as a clientelistic arm of Sandinista social programs.
Of course, the dictatorship made a vehement effort to avoid declaring in the new law that this maneuver is a dissolution of the MEFCCA and they barely left a three-line paragraph to accept it. Here we tell you.
On January 10, 2024, the dictator Daniel Ortega sent to the National Assembly, which he controls in its entirety, the “Initiative Law to Reform Law No. 290, Law of organization, competence and procedures of the Executive Branch, related to the Ministry for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship and reform of Law No. 499 General Law of Cooperatives, related to INFOCCOP” to grant the process of law formation.
The reform includes the mandate to create a new Ministry of State, which will be called Ministry for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship, and they incorporate it as ministry number 14, the same number that the MEFCCA has in the current law, without clarifying whether the Meffca will be one more or they permanently disappear, which reveals that the intention is to eliminate it, but without declaring it, to avoid confirming it. the news that the media have published since the disaster of the previous entity began.
At the same time, it adds a new decentralized entity that will be under the direction of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), which it calls Nicaraguan Institute for Cooperative Development (INFOCOOP).
The Ministry for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship will have all the functions and powers that the MEFCCA had, especially those that have to do with support for microbusiness, production, cultural tourism, crafts, gastronomy, family farming, among others.
In addition, it gives it the power to coordinate plans and programs to promote small tourist, artisanal and cultural businesses, and empowers them to link with other entities of the central government, regional, municipal and territorial governments, says the bill.
It also orders you to establish and manage the registry of small businesses, enterprises, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
In addition, it authorizes it to “organize and develop entrepreneurship fairs at the national, departmental, regional, municipal or territorial level as spaces for promotion, marketing, transfer of traditional knowledge, generation of opportunities and productive chains… It may also establish flea markets, parks of fairs or other demonstration spaces, at the national level”, functions that in previous years were in charge of the MEFCCA.
It even establishes the Ministry for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship as the “governing body” of Law 645, Law for the Promotion, Promotion and Development of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, a function that the MEFCCA had.
In the initiative, Ortega, again, without saying so, snatches the Cooperative Development Institute (INFOCOOP) from MEFCCA, and designates it as a decentralized entity under the direction of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), although he presents it as if it were a new entity. «The Nicaraguan Institute for Cooperative Development is created, as a decentralized entity under the sectoral leadership of the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic, with technical autonomy, its own assets and legal personality, whose name may be abbreviated as INFOCOOP and for the purposes of this Law and its Regulation will be understood as the Enforcement Authority,” says the reform.
The only paragraph in which he confesses the failure of the MEFCCA
Since its creation in July 2012, Mefcca represented Murillo’s privileged management of the regime’s welfare policies, and apparently, that is why it is difficult for him to openly accept that he has failed and that he had to dismantle the entity.
In the new 12-page bill that would be approved in the coming days in the red and black Parliament, there is a single paragraph that mentions the “death” of the MEFCCA. It is the Fifth Article, and they title it “Denominations”:
«In the entire national legal system where the Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy is mentioned, it must read: “Ministry for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship”, except for what is related to the Nicaraguan Institute for Cooperative Development, INFOCOOP, which is transferred under the sectoral leadership of the Attorney General’s Office,” he let the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship be read with evident bitterness.
Those awarded with the “death” of the MEFCCA
It remains to be seen who they will appoint as head of the new Ministry for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship, but so far, the dictatorship has exhibited a waste of public resources for an entity called National Commission for Creative Economy, chaired by Camila Ortega Murillo, daughter of the Sandinista tyrants, since 2019.
On the other hand, the former beauty queen Xiomara Blandino, second wife of Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo and daughter-in-law of the dictators, who owns another organization called Nicaragua Undertakes.
A subject named Humberto González, who has appeared in official public events as “Secretary of Creative and Orange Economy.”
To date, neither the National Commission for Creative Economy nor Nicaragua Emprende have provided details of their “successes” promoting entrepreneurship. There are also no known statistics on small businesses developed with the public money that these entities have used.
And what happened to the MEFCCA?
Of the end of the Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy, only what the independent media published is known.
The government has kept the dismantling under wraps. What was known at the time was the sweep of hundreds of workers and technicians. It was also learned of the annulment of the appointment of Minister Justa Pérez.
The Ortega Justa Pérez Acuña She was officially removed from her position as minister of the Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy (Mefcca), according to presidential agreement 140-2024, sent by the dictator Daniel Ortega and published on Friday, August 9, 2024 in La Gaceta.
The strange thing is that to replace Pérez Acuña, Ortega appointed Fulvia Castro Matus to the position, who had just been Nicaragua’s ambassador to Brazil. The appointment of Castro Matus as head of Mefcca occurred through agreement 142-2024.
In August 2024, the media Confidencial published about the sweep of some 400 Mefcca workers and technicians. Workers from the delegations in Bluefields, León, Chinandega, Masaya and Granada were expelled from this institution. In each departmental office, between 20 and 26 employees were laid off, the publication said.
Later, in September 2024, the dictatorship, through presidential decree 14-2024, ordered to administratively merge the Usura Cero and Adelante programs, in addition to taking away the administration and execution of these from the Ministry of the Family, Cooperative and Associative Economy (Mefcca) and passing it on to the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit.
It was also learned that some of the Ortega fanatics who were imprisoned for participating in a WhatsApp group with Carlos Fonseca’s son, where they conspired against Rosario Murillo, were included in the Mefcca. According to the official accusation of the Prosecutor’s Office, these imprisoned fanatics were accused of theft from the State.
The accusation indicates that “the co-defendants, taking advantage of their positions in public entities, “They appropriated funds from the Nation’s treasury, intended to grant credits to producers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners in the urban and rural sector, who were aimed at improving the quality and competitiveness of their products.”
«To achieve their purposes, the co-defendants devised a framework criminal, in which each one, according to the functions they performed, used confidential information from the credit applicants, to make them believe that they would be financing their entrepreneurship; when in reality, the disbursements were for family members and close friends of these co-defendants,” says the Prosecutor’s Office, controlled by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
