Rapid Economic Growth in El Salvador: Analysis and Implications for the Future

薩爾瓦多快速之經濟成長：未來之分析與意涵The fast, successful economic development in El Salvador has been attracting investors from countries worldwide. Some examples of investments are the United States, which has been investing about one billion US dollars yearly, along with the British Islands, Mexico, Venezuela and France among others investing several hundreds of US million dollars. Addressing this point, the thesis asks: why have there been so many investments in El Salvador? The finding of this thesis is that El Salvador’s policies have been creating an environment which has stimulated economic development. A description of these policies follows that El Salvador’s policies are in accordance with economic theory, while the policies of other countries in the region not exactly. Moreover, El Salvador has performed better than other countries in Central America in several fields. For example, it was ranked the 24th most open economies in the world by the Heritage Foundation (Wall Street Journal 2005), ahead of Italy, Norway, Japan, France, India, etc. Finally, this thesis projects what investment can be done in the future, especially with infrastructure improving very fast. An example of this is the new world class PANAMAX and POSTPANAMAX seaport, which will start operations in 2008, to develop the project of a dry canal to cross from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans