The Minister of Finance and Public Credit of the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo regime, Iván Acosta Montalbán, revealed that the Sandinista apparatus is “assessing” adopting the MIR payment system in Nicaragua, a financial mechanism created by Russia to evade the international sanctions imposed for the West. “Just as it is done in Cuba and Venezuela, to neutralize and defeat US financial aggression,” the official remarked in an interview with a Moscow propaganda outlet. The economist made the announcement in the midst of the aggressive alignment that Managua has been carrying out with the Kremlin, Beijing and Tehran to try to alleviate the international isolation in which it is sunk, due to the repression and consolidation of a totalitarian regime.
“The peoples have the right to seek and use the best tools for the good social, economic and political functioning of the country. The sanctions, the coercion, are illegitimate, illegal and unfair,” said Acosta Montalbán in the same tone in which the Nicaraguan presidential couple usually complains about the sanctions they have suffered since 2018. The latest sanctions Prescribed by Washington to Managua were given on July 19, in full celebration of the anniversary of the Sandinista revolution: Thirteen officials of the regime were added to the list of Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors, known as the Engel List. These operators are responsible for the denationalization, exile, and confiscation of more than 300 opponents, including 222 former political prisoners.
“Therefore, this raises in this situation, the techniques of the economic tool to be able to have the best developments, the best optimal results to be able to avoid unilateral coercive measures, which are, I repeat, illegitimate, illegal and unfair,” he argued. the finance minister. “We have all the rights to use the best measures from the point of view of functionality of the payment system. We are evaluating the MIR payment system, but also another payment system that guarantees to neutralize and defeat these attacks”.
“It is useless for a dollarized country”
Manuel Orozco, a researcher at the Inter-American Dialogue, explained to EL PAÍS that the Ortega and Murillo regime is imitating all the procedures that “satellites connected to Russia need to carry out to make payments.” However, the expert highlights, “it does not have much meaning, functionality, or utility for a country with a dollarized economy like Nicaragua’s, regardless of political considerations.”
Despite the sanctions imposed by the international community, especially by Washington, Nicaragua’s main trading partner continues to be the United States. The exchange between Managua and Moscow is insignificant compared to the commercial traffic between Nicaragua and the United States. For example, during the first two months of 2022, the United States paid 300 million dollars to Nicaragua for exports. While the growth of “266.7% in terms of volume” of exports that the Ortega-Murillo regime boasted in 2021 to Moscow barely corresponded to 13 million dollars.
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The son of the presidential couple, Laureano Ortega Murillo, acknowledged in the same program in which the Minister of Finance participated that the commercial relationship with distant Russia is still minimal. “For our part, we see a great opportunity for Russian products to come to Nicaragua and for a Nicaraguan product to be placed in the Russian market… It is something that we still have to promote more strongly and bring those business circles closer,” repaired the adviser to his parents. in terms of foreign investment.
For his part, Orozco insists on remembering Nicaragua’s dependence “with the developed, industrialized world, understood as the United States, Canada and the European Union.” “99.9% of Nicaraguan trade, predominantly, occurs in dollars. So using a payment network like that, MIR’s, is not very important. What’s more, Russia has tried to implement the payment system within the context of the BRICS, which are trying to create their own digital currency, and it has not had any kind of impact,” says the director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development Program. of the Inter-American Dialogue.
In recent months, the Ortega y Murillo regime has signed dozens of trade, cultural, and trade agreements with Russia, China, and Iran. However, the impact that these powers can generate in economic matters in Nicaragua is still imperceptible. Last June, the presidential couple received Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi with honors in Managua, but beyond the actual commercial exchange, the political analyst and opponent Eliseo Núñez believes that “Ortega’s strategy” is to use these alliances frowned upon by the West “In return, do not continue to sanction him and do not continue asking for democracy for Nicaragua.” Other international experts have also pointed out that the Sandinista regime seeks to learn from the ayatollahs other ways to circumvent international sanctions.
Along the same lines, Orozco argues that “the assessment” of Minister Acosta Montalbán to add Nicaragua to the MIR payment system is “more than anything propaganda.” “It is misinformation to mediate an aspect that has little relevance but that makes noise in the population. Somehow the immediate effect is to continue scaring Nicaraguans with radicalization towards the least loved countries in the world”, states the expert.
Another scenario that Núñez addresses is that the Ortega-Murillos demonstrate total submission to the Russian system, although this “is not going to give answers to the Nicaraguan economy, but it will give political answers.” “Ortega is basically trying to create an alternative model and we will see if the national banks start using this system.”
“The second thing,” the exiled opponent in Costa Rica told EL PAÍS, is that the presidential couple “is preparing to eventually have a closure of SWIFT. This is what could happen if the regime continues down this path. So it is anticipating a much more rigid and strong sanctions model than what they have received up to now. And this implies that he is not thinking of giving in on the issues of repression and on the issues of isolation in Nicaragua.”
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