The inexplicable information acquired such an impact that the conservative government of the current Ecuadorian president, the wealthy banker William Lassotriumphantly announced that the strength of his government and the international promotion carried out by his administration had managed to break historical investment records in Ecuador.
As the Ecuadorian Minister of Production, Julio José Prado, recently informed the local press, foreign investment represented a growth of 218% for the country in the first half of 2022 compared to the first half of 2021. “We ended September with great news , in the first half of this year foreign investment reached $951 million.
This is a direct result of the investment attraction policy established by President Guillermo Lasso, which has generated improvements in the climate for doing business in Ecuador, as well as macroeconomic and fiscal stability,” the chief said in a published video. on his Twitter account. “At the beginning of this year we said that we are not going to stop and so we did, we continue to promote Ecuador in the world, we continue to open markets, and we continue to generate job opportunities through the growth of private investments in Ecuador.”, Prado concluded in his message to the Ecuadorian citizenry.
Foreign investment grew 218% in the 1st half of this year. It is the highest level in recent years, even higher than before the pandemic.
It is the result of the investment attraction strategy proposed by the President @LassoGuillermo Y @Production_Ecu pic.twitter.com/8jzqLuTHw9
– Julio José Prado (@pradojj) October 1, 2022
Following the path of money Uruguayan
After the government’s announcement, it was discovered that of the 888 million dollars of foreign direct investment that arrived in Quito in the last quarter, 86% came from Uruguay.
When the Central Bank of Uruguay was consulted about this anomalous situation, our main regulator of the Uruguayan economy replied that it lacks information on the private capital that is sent from our country to other external markets, clarifying that everything that enters from other countries is registered, but what goes abroad from private capital, has no records. For its part, the Ecuadorian embassy in Montevideo did not reveal which were the Uruguayan businessmen who had made this voluminous investment in Ecuador..
Several independent Ecuadorian media outlets, surprised by the unprecedented Uruguayan investment in their country, began an investigation that has not yet been completed, but from which it can be deduced that a company based in Quito, named Ruart Ecuador SAS, of which one of the shareholders is Ruart Uruguay SA would have carried out a capital increase.
From what was investigated, it emerges that on June 29, the company Ruart Ecuador, which acts as a holding company and was created in December 2020, received from its shareholder Ruart Uruguay SA the sum of 766 million dollars that it capitalized. And that is why a Uruguayan investment of 766 million dollars appeared in the records of the Central Bank of Ecuador, which exceeded all Chinese and European investments of that period in a country whose national currency is the dollar.
But the origin of that money, which consecrated Uruguay as the great benefactor and foreign investor in Ecuador, was not really an investment, but the payment of a debt that was made through a transfer of shares. Apparently that money never entered Ecuador: only papers entered.
Finally, the Central Bank of Ecuador, according to various Ecuadorian media, clarified to the elated President Lasso, that not a single dollar from Uruguay had entered the country, that only papers entered, that it had been a transfer of fiduciary rights and that there was no effective flow of foreign currency.
The Ecuadorian president, now saddened, had to back down on his celebrated announcement. The Chinese, who occupy the first places of investment in Ecuador and the Europeans, also breathed a sigh of relief. For the time being, our country continues to be a dependent recipient of capital and not a generous exporter of investments abroad.
