The Central Reserve Bank and Burger King
In yesterday's post about migration statistics, I mentioned El Salvador's dependence on remittances from Salvadorans abroad. El Salvador's Central Reserve Bank keeps track of the that money flow. Its latest statistics on remittance flows show that remittances are up slightly (2.1%) from the same time period last year. Through October of this year, Salvadorans living abroad have sent in $2.926 billion, while in 2009 they had transmitted $2.865 billion. That's an average of almost $300 million per month -- or $50 per month for every man, woman and child in El Salvador. And El Salvador's commercial interests are structured to capture that remittance flow as much as they can. I learned about one example of this last week when I was in San Salvador. A friend pointed out the very large indoor playgrounds which accompany every fast food franchise in the city. Pizza Huts, Burger Kings, KFCs, Pollo Campero and more all have these big play areas, much larger than