The unemployment and inflation will be the “main economic problems to face” in 2023 for the Government Honduran who presides Xiomara Castroaccording to the director of the Institute of Economic Research of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (AN H), Ricardo Matamoros.
“The indicators of the labor market, with unemployment that this year will close at 8%, together with inflation, which in 2022 is expected to close at 11%, will become the main economic problems to be faced by government in the year 2023,” Matamoros told EFE in Tegucigalpa.
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He added that in 2021, according to official figures, unemployment closed at a rate of 8.6%, which was only slightly lower than that of 2020, when it reached 10% due to the covid-19 pandemic, which it began to expand that year in the Central American country.
Matamoros stressed that according to the projections of the Institute for Economic Research of the UNAH, the unemployment figures in 2022 will close at around 8%, which constitutes a “slight reduction compared to the previous year and with values still higher than before the pandemic.” ».
In addition, according to the same institution, in Honduras, a country with around 10 million inhabitants, 3.5 million people have employment problems and, of that figure, some 400,000 “are unemployed.”
These unemployed people “are openly looking for work, but they haven’t found it,” Matamoros said. To them are added those who, although they are doing some productive work, receive an income that is below the minimum wage, or the number of hours they work are less than a full-time work day.
With these conditions, these Hondurans cannot generate the necessary income to cover the basic food basket, he added.
Matamoros believes that if poverty is to be reduced significantly and sustained over time, and the living conditions of the Honduran population improve, it would be necessary to “attack these different groups” that have employment problems.
According to official sources, poverty in honduras It affects more than 70% of its population. It is also necessary to create the conditions so that the work demanded by the unemployed is dignified, productive and generates income to cover the basic needs of the family.
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In the same way, other types of conditions and capacity building must be created so that the discouraged can also enter the labor market, said Matamoros, who is also of the opinion that for Honduras mejore needs sustained economic growth of at least 6% per year, for a decade.
In its newsletter for December, the Institute of Economic Research from the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) pointed out that Honduras will close 2022 with an inflation of 11%, affected, among other factors, by the increase in the prices of the main consumer products in the year-end season.
