Industry and Commerce Minister Luis Manuel Bonetti yesterday publicized a letter from his Salvadorian counterpart that announces that El Salvador has ratified the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the five members of the Central American common market (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua) and the Dominican Republic. Economy Minister Eduardo Zablah-Touché said in his letter to Bonetti, dated May 4th, that El Salvador’s legislature unanimously approved ratification on April 29th. El Salvador becomes the second Central American nation to ratify the agreement; Costa Rica did so just days before El Salvador. Guatemala is expected to ratify shortly. Nicaragua recently informally notified the DR that it will drop its efforts to renegotiate the terms of the FTA’s market access protocol ("Miami Protocol") and submit the treaty package as-is for ratification by its National Assembly. That would leave only Honduras as demanding a renegotiation of the protocol, which so far the DR is refusing to do.
