After lowering crime in El Salvador to historic levels, President Nayib Bukele wants attract foreigners who are highly qualified professionals and want to live in the country to help improve the national economy.
“Their contributions will have an enormous impact on our society and the future of our country,” said Bukele on April 6 in X, announcing that they would offer 5,000 passports for highly qualified foreigners. He also assured that they would facilitate the relocation of professionals, “guaranteeing 0% taxes and duties on the transfer of families and assets.”
But the proposal has not been well received by some Salvadoran academics, who believe that instead of attracting foreign professionals, the government should address, among other things, the economic crisis in which the University of El Salvador, the only public university in the country, finds itself. Central American and to which the president promised a prosperous future in 2019 when he was seeking the presidency.
For Napoleón Cornejo, a Salvadoran engineer specialized in the aerospace industry and based in the Netherlands, the Salvadoran government's offer to attract foreign professionals is “counterproductive,” because there is no academic force to absorb that knowledge, he told the Voice of America.
Cornejo is one of those who resents the crisis in which the public university finds itself, to which the government owed $52 million until March.
“When one attracts foreign investment or talent, it is to put them in the function of national development and absorb knowledge,” Cornejo said. “We also seek to condition their coming to collaborate with national institutes or professionals so that knowledge is absorbed,” he added.
The public university of El Salvador operates with a savings policy that includes the suspension of research projects and academic programs such as teaching assistants. Likewise, 1,200 scholarships for low-income students are in danger, according to university authorities told local media.
“The fact that the university of El Salvador does not have a full budget is affecting, first of all, professional training,” as well as “the production of new knowledge” and “the necessary social projection,” he told the VOA Rafael Paz Narváez, director of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Sciences and Humanities of the university.
For Narváez, an innovation and development program like the one that the Salvadoran government seeks to promote takes years and needs the support of political and social science study centers, such as universities, including the national university.
“El Salvador has a number of intellectuals already trained at the national and international level. We have a good staff of academics and scientists, but what they do not have is opportunity. Several are emigrating to other countries,” said José Vicente Cuchillas, dean at the University of El Salvador.
The press department of the government of El Salvador did not respond to a request for comment from the Voice of America for this report.
As of April 8, the Ministry of Education said it had received 400 applications from foreign professionals seeking to obtain the free passports offered by Bukele.
Program for bitcoiners
The Bukele government has also launched another program that seeks to make El Salvador a paradise for bitcoiners.
The program for bitcoiners, called “Adopting El Salvador”, aims to attract 1,000 investors each year, after making the crypto asset its legal tender along with the dollar.
To strengthen the program, Bukele has been searching for two years build a “Bitcoin City” in La Unión, in the east of El Salvador, a kind of bitcoiner metropolis financed with the “volcano bonds”, announced in 2021 by Bukele but which have not been issued so far.
These bonds would aim to raise $1 billion backed by bitcoins.
There is still nothing about the city that Bukele has promised — which according to the announcement would have an airport, shops, green areas and a monument to crypto assets in its plaza — but the government assures that it has not abandoned the idea, and has said that it hopes that By the first half of 2024, the bonds have already been issued.
The economy, an outstanding debt
The high public debt, more than 80% of the Gross Domestic Product, and the lack of liquidity to pay institutions such as the university of El Salvador, have caused the Salvadoran government to use money from workers' pensions to honor some of its commitments.
With a minimum wage of around $365 per month and a basic basket of over $450, Bukele seeks to rely on foreign investment to improve the living conditions of the Salvadoran population.
According to the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador, economic growth projections for 2024 they paint a slight improvement with 3% to 3.5%, driven mainly by private and public investment, following improvements in tourism and security.
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