Honduras counts the high cost of its 2009 coup

If Honduras’s political rehabilitation is complete after the return of Manuel Zelaya, the president ousted by the 2009 coup, its financial recovery is not. It is the third-poorest country in mainland Latin America, and is heavily reliant on foreign help. In the six months between the coup and the election of Porfirio Lobo, the current president, the aid tap was turned off.

In 2009 public debt rose from 19.8 per cent of GDP in 2008 to 26.3 percent in 2010. Paying back those loans will now be a brake on Honduras’s recovery.

Original source: The Economist