Orlando Núñez Soto and César Martínez (2016), published May 2018 by the Council for Social Economy (CES). Translated by Aureliano López.
The Contribution of the Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy to Nicaragua's National Wealth
Foreword
This paper is a statistical observation of the emergence of a new economic subject in Nicaragua’s economy that has given life to a model of wealth creation different from the traditional paradigm based on the supremacy of national and international corporations, usually referred to as the bourgeoisie in revolutionary terms.
A political revolution is the substitution of one political class for another. If the political class is sufficiently revolutionary acting as an instrument to create the conditions of a social revolution or the substitution of one economic class for another, then its duty is to seek protection from the State and contribute to transform the new social class into a new economic subject, in turn accountable for turning itself into an alternative to the national and international bourgeoisie still operating in Nicaragua. In turn, this new economic subject must become a new political subject, changing from a class in itself (its objective situation) into a class for itself ( its subjectively organized consciousness).
This new economic subject comprised of the family, community, cooperative and associative economy is organized into the Council for Social Economy (CES), where low-income farmers, peasants, fishermen, artisans and merchants are grouped together. Likewise, the National Council of Cooperatives (CONACOOP) and the National Council of Micro, Small and Medium Industry (COMAMIPYME) belong to this associative sector, bringing together small and medium farmers, including both worker-day laborers of the ago-export sector and medium-sized entrepreneurs. Added to this new socioeconomic arrangement, the Center for Research and Promotion of the Social Economy (CIPRES) has been an organizer and champion for the most important social organizations and movements in Nicaragua.
We must point out that, in the last decade, the Sandinista government prioritized an alliance with the private corporations grouped in the Superior Council of Private Enterprises (COSEP), mainly due to the wealth that this economic sector allegedly has and that the government does not have, as well as the pressing need to generate new wealth, employment and development.
However, the political crisis that began in the second semester of 2018 ended the alliance between the grand capital and the government. As a result, the Council for Social Economy (CES) has strengthened its traditional ties with the Sandinista government and advances in its strategic alliance, predicting a future where the new economic subject acquires greater political belligerence, thus becoming a social force of growth and partnership, enhancing the political, social and economic process through a significant advance in the political economy of the revolution.
Introduction
The objective of this document is to describe the economic weight of the family, community, cooperative and associative economy, which for simplicity we will refer to as the people’s economy, relative to the wealth produced in Nicaragua—although, paradoxically, it is not where the wealth remains. We will measure the wealth by means of conventional criteria, that is, from the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), given that this is also one of the few indicators recorded yearly.
In this paper, we will describe, classify and analyze the national economy in three sectors, namely: the corporate economy, the people’s economy (worker-producers and salaried workers), and the public economy. We will thus measure the contribution of each sector to the national wealth.
We know the conventional belief is that wealth is produced only by the wealthy or by rich companies, where entrepreneurs and workers are found, with the former contributing capital and others contributing labor, which is partly true, but it is not the whole truth. Therefore, we will analyze and advance the argument that in Nicaragua those who produce the most wealth are the most impoverished producers, specifically those within the family, community, cooperative and associative economy, to which we will also add the income of salaried workers’.
Classical political economists (Smith, Ricardo and Marx) argued that the origin of wealth was labor, while conventional or liberal economists argued that wealth was produced by capital (means of production). Today, any economist accepts that capital is accumulated (or past) labor in addition to technology or knowledge, such as a tractor which has incorporated a large amount of labor or men hours for its construction. All capital is the result of accumulated labor, hence, labor (past and present) is accountable for national value added and wealth creation. In the present exercise, however, we are not including as part of the wealth created by the people’s economy what the classical economists called capital gains or the surplus value of the labor, generated by factory workers, but monopolized by the bourgeoisie.
We will use a more simple, concrete classification, not only dividing the economy between capital, represented by employers, and labor, as represented by salaried workers, but by introducing a further category that we have called worker-producers, which are neither business people nor they are salaried workers - that is, they do not hire labor nor are they themselves hired as workers most of the time - although all worker-producers belong to the private sector and could be hired as laborers in a labor market. Therefore, the people’s economy has two key agents: the worker-producers and the salaried workers whose income is equal to or less than the cost of the basic basket.
Additionally, we include the public sector’s economic contribution, which it is not part of the private or corporate sector even though it comprises salaried workers, because public sector employees’ income ought to be added to the universe of the people’s economy.
Now, taking into consideration that the national accounts do not classify economic data and facts in this way, we must introduce some statistical inferences relative to the subject we are dealing with, but always respecting the information and terminology used by national accounts. At the end of this work, we will disclose the methodological annotations utilized to conceptualize and calculate the economic weight of the people’s economy in relation to the national accounts, as well as census results and periodic surveys related to specific topics, including agricultural census and household surveys.
First, let us define wealth which is the most important concept in this document.
In a capitalist market economy, wealth is the sum total of things for sale, that is, goods and services used for consumption and exchange, or, put another way, the equivalent in money of the total value of goods produced and services provided in a country for one year, which is usually measured and referred to as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The origin of consumer goods is the productive activity of labor applied to nature; the origin of the goods for exchange is both labor and capital, understanding the latter as the labor accumulated in other goods, services or knowledge, but in the private hands of entrepreneurs. The water we drink, for example, is found in nature, but it requires labor to get it out, stored, bottled if necessary and taken to the market. All these activities require means and capital to carry them out. These activities involve labor and tools or means to be used (i.e., capital or accumulated labor, because someone had to make them, for example, a bucket, a pump, a vehicle, some bottles, etc.).
In other words, wealth encompasses goods and services that have some utility and, in a market economy, have an exchange value (labor) and a price (value expressed in money). Given that in a market economy all values are expressed in money, the latter as the universal equivalent of commodities appears to be the wealth of an individual, a company or a country. And, so we say: a wealthy individual is a person who has a lot of money. A company is rich because it has assets accounted for in terms of money and so its social capital may be equivalent to their assets multiplied by their respective prices.
In corporations and the capitalist market economy, capital has become more important and much more profitable than labor. The objective is the accumulation of capital (investing and producing to re-invest); they produce to sell and are motivated by obtaining revenue or profit; or as it is said in political economics: the capitalist’s objective is to accumulate for the sake of accumulating, that is, to produce to make money and make money to invest and produce even more. The practice is not a simple addiction problem, but it is the market competition that forces the capitalist to act upon it. This is different from both the people’s economy and public economy sectors whose objective is to produce or reinvest for the general welfare or the common good.
In some countries, such as ours, where in addition to corporations, there are productive economic units that are not considered as businesses per se, because they do not use much capital: workers are not the owners or employees; a part of the production is destined for self-consumption; and the objective of production is the well-being of the worker-producer’s family. This would be the case of peasant units, fishermen, small craftsman workshops, or self-employed workers. In all these economic units, the contribution of labor is more important than the contribution of capital (means of production), which is often limited to a plot of land and a plow, a lacquer or a carpentry tool.
In Nicaragua, the people’s economy has a very important social and economic weight for the entire economy and society, both in terms of the number of worker-producers and the levels of production and consumption. It also plays an important role by purchasing and selling goods and services for the corporate economy. This configuration is called social economy. The difference between the people’s economy and social economy is that the former is composed of individuals and individual activities, while the latter has a certain level of association as in cooperatives.
There is also a third economic sector comprised by the state or public economy, which oversees the creation of the socioeconomic infrastructure, so that entrepreneurs, workers and other partners of the people’s economy can operate, including education, health, housing and transportation to reproduce or support the labor force.
Having classified the economy in three sectors: corporate economy, people’s economy, and public economy, we will go on to describe and analyze the contribution of each one to the performance of the economy and the national wealth.
Our analysis is very simple and allows us to assert with confidence that most of the wealth and dynamic economy in Nicaragua is generated by the people’s economy. Therefore, we can describe the panorama of the Nicaraguan economy, measure the contribution of the people’s economy to wealth, and describe the indicators we used to measure wealth and verify the results and our conclusions.
This document is divided into two sections. The first section analyses the wealth distribution in accordance with the number of economic establishments, employment and gross domestic product. The second section explains the methodology used, including the concepts applied and the economic calculations.
Contribution of the Small-Sized Producers to Nicaragua’s Wealth
In this section, we will describe in more detail the three economic sectors: corporate economy, people’s economy and public economy.
I. The Corporate Economy
The corporate economy is comprised by small, medium and large sized private companies. Its main component is capital or money contributed to start up production and service. The money these companies use may be their own or may be borrowed from a privately held national or foreign bank or from a state or international financial institution. In this economic model, salaried workers are hired, ensuring they are paid the minimum wage, because the lower the production costs the higher the profit.
The corporations that operate in Nicaragua, whether domestic or foreign, produce for the internal or external market. Most of the corporate production, both rural and urban, agricultural, fishing or mining, is produced for export, so it does not matter that salaries are very low, because their buyers are outside our national borders.
In general, corporations, especially the largest ones, operate with a lot of capital and technology, precisely to achieve a productivity that makes them competitive in the global market. They use much more currency (US dollars) than the small economic units (e.g., peasant establishments) of the people’s economy. Hence, each US dollar of production within the corporate economy is more expensive compared to the production cost in the people’s economy.
Foreign companies have more capital, technology and knowledge of international trade than domestic companies. In recent decades, foreign capital has increasingly acquired companies from domestic entrepreneurs. On the one hand, it means an advantage, because they may generate employment and bring more capital, technology and business knowledge, but on the other hand, it becomes a disadvantage, since a large part of their profits are taken abroad, and they can also repatriate their own capital at any time. In the case of foreign companies called short-term companies, such as free zone corporations and enclave companies (banana, timber, mining, etc.), they can migrate to other countries at any time or whenever natural resources (e.g. precious metals) are depleted.
Nevertheless, there are companies with large capital that do not necessarily produce goods, but are very important for the corporate sector, such as the banks, which do not produce even a head of bananas, but they earn most of the money. In a capitalist market economy, whoever has more wealth in the form of money and puts it into circulation as capital (i.e., wealth reproduced through a social relation), they are the ones who most appropriate the national wealth, regardless of whether or not they produced it. For example, bankers, merchants and coffee exporters appropriate more wealth than coffee producers who belong to the people’s economy, such as peasants or small scale coffee producers. The same goes for other areas such as livestock, where many small scale farmers, responsible for 80% of raising beef cattle, earn less than the intermediaries who fatten steers, process meat and export it abroad.
Previously, some economists only talked about entrepreneurs, workers and the public sector. Nowadays, one cannot talk about the national economy without referring to the worker-producers of the so-called people’s economy. This is much less well known than the corporate economy, therefore we will dedicate more time to describe it.
II. The People’s Economy
The people’s economy is mostly represented by those Nicaraguan families who live off their own work, either relying on the household work that depends on the unremunerated or recognized labor of the women or the work carried out outside home that generates an amount of money for salaried labor. However, to measure the people’s economy we only incorporate those households or economic units that produce goods and services for the market. That is, we do not include the households’ contribution to producing the main resources of a society, which are indeed its citizens and workers; human resources that are also produced for the market but in a longer term. How much does it cost for a family to produce a craftsman or a professional?
Before describing how the people’s economy works, let us discuss something else about the family’s work, the basis of the people’s economy, especially women who are the soul of the family’s work. There are women or single mothers who work outside the home and there are those who do not, although the latter share some of the money brought home by their partners; likewise, there are women or single mothers who do not work outside the home nor receive any financial support from their partners and they have to survive with some money that they may receive from relatives living within the country or abroad. In most cases, regardless of the situation in which they find themselves, women usually work at home, dedicating themselves to housework and child-rearing. It should be noted that women’s household, transforming part of the money they may receive and adding some value, serves to produce the main human commodity: citizens-workers-producers the economic system needs for its reproduction.
Together with public services, family work is one of those that most contributes to the reproduction of the labor force and the capitalist system itself, and paradoxically without it the reproduction of the labor force and the system would not be possible. Part of workers’ exploitation and capitalists’ profit originates from the free work of the family, mainly work done by women. As traditionally happens with the people’s economy in general, work in the family, particularly the women’s contribution, is not fully included in the system of national accounts, except indirectly through household surveys.
The family’s economy, including adults, youths and children, extends outside the home, integrating productive and commercial activities in both the countryside and city, either in the neighborhood or community market or in markets further away from home. Outside their home, family members may have a work activity detached from kinship relationships and their work is more individual, although they may be part of collective groups. They may be salaried workers who have a small parcel or a small establishment where they frequently work with a relative, but always relying on another support that contributes to their own livelihood. Overall, the people’s economy sector is comprised of commercial establishments or self-employed workers.
All work activities in the family economy relies much more on the family labor than on capital. They are usually subsistence activities, where goods and services are generated and consumed by the family members and/or exchanged in local markets. Those involved in the family economy do not hire labor or do so rarely, completing the production of commodities with the help of relatives. They include peasants, fishermen, artisans, multi-skilled workers, domestic workers, and small merchants. Likewise, we include as part of the people’s economy, salaried workers who work full-time, part-time or survive precariously as underemployed, because they live off their own work (with salary equivalent to, or below, the cost of the basic basket of goods) but subordinated to an employer. We also incorporate private non-profit organizations as part of the people’s economy and whose resources and objectives are to assist the country's most vulnerable rural and urban families.
To measure the contribution of these workers, producers and merchants to the people’s economy, we group them as they appear in the statistics presented in this document. The grouping follows both economic and social criteria in accordance with the way national statistics organize data and indicators. The statistics represent small scale, rural and urban production, the many different kinds of cooperatives, indigenous and ethnic communities, the labor unions, and the non-profit institutions (ISFL).
The reader may ask about the informal sector economy. Obviously, much of the informal sector is indeed the people’s economy, because it involves activities aimed at the market and it offers income and employment, albeit precarious. Cataloguing the people’s economy as an informal economy would have many drawbacks, besides being a pejorative term, because it is generally associated with squatters or individuals with few obligations to anyone. The truth is that every worker or producer is to some extent a consumer paying value-added tax (or sales tax), whose total amount is greater than the income tax paid by employers. And of course, the worker or worker-producer has obligations to himself and his family, which must be met at the risk of perishing, because the capitalist system does not guarantee employment and employment is less and less available in the job market. The biggest drawback for a worthwhile economic policy classifying the economy as consisting of entrepreneurs, employed workers, the public sector and the informal sector, is that it leaves out the workers-producers sector which is very important to the national economy.
On the other hand, the so-called informal sector is defined more by what it does not have than by what it has. For example, an informal worker is someone who does not have a formal employment or only has a precarious employment, does not pay income taxes, is not registered in any public or private institution, does not produce commodities for the market, does not receive any social benefits, is not registered in the national accounts or is indirectly registered, is a sub-sector of the universe of households, is not linked to the capitalist market, and generally lives very precariously. In other words, the informal sector classification does not consider what is most important for our analysis: namely, economic activity that generates wealth for the national economy. Although linked to consumption, the so-called informal sector is a very important factor in our societies, whose economies depend on spending, just as it is, for example, the case of the people who receive cash remittances from abroad and whose families survive mostly from them.
Recently, some international organizations have begun to consider the category of self-employed workers, although such a designation is more related to urban street workers. Other organizations consider as informal workers only those who produce for the market or are subject to contract work; however, some worker-producers allocate a substantial portion of their production to household consumption such as the peasants.
III. The Public Economy
The public sector administers the nation's patrimony spending a budget derived from the taxes collected from entrepreneurs, producers, workers, consumers and residents in general. Its sources of revenue also come from loans, grants and notes and coins issued by the central bank.
The public sector is responsible for building and providing the population with roads, docks, roads, bridges, electrical facilities, portable drinking water and sewerage services, as well as for securing export and import markets and procuring loans from international organizations and rich-country governments.
In the past, the public sector’s economic weight was more significant. However, due to the neoliberal measures imposed by the United States [during the liberal-conservative governments between 1990 and 2006], such as privatizing the national patrimony and eliminating tariffs or other taxes on foreign companies, the public sector influence has been reduced, consequently affecting the overall delivery of services for the population
Another important function of the public sector is to guide the national economic strategy together with other key economic actors, to plan the economy and to prevent prices from being altered to such an extent that they would destabilize production, distribution or families’ purchasing power.
Finally, the public sector or the State itself has the responsibility for enforcing the law, safeguarding citizen security and maintaining social order and political stability in the country. As we will see later in the enclosed tables, the public sector generates investments, revenues and expenses that help to boost the economy. A significant number of civil, military and police servants and other individuals linked to state enterprises work for the public sector.
In the following sections, we will measure the economic weight each economic sector (corporate economy, people’s economy and public economy) has in the Nicaraguan economy by measuring the share of the sector in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). First, we will analyze the economic units (establishments or organizations) and employment and/or occupation. Second, we will examine the sector’s contribution to GDP as it is later shown in the tables below. Third, we will assess the sector in relation to its contribution of foreign currency to the national economy. However, before arguing about these topics, we want to present a synthesis of the key national economic data.
IV. Key National Economic Data
In 2014, Nicaragua registered a GDP of US$ 11,805.6 million with a real GDP per capita of US$1,855, one of the lowest in the American continent. It represents a country economically dependent on the global market and foreign capital, where a large part of the economic activity is based on seasonal agriculture and a minor industrial sector. In recent years, corresponding to the Sandinista government (2007-2015), Nicaragua has had an economic growth of 4.5%, well above the average in Latin America, which is barely 2%. Nonetheless, it still represents an economic market with a high percentage of precarious employment (temporary employment, underemployment) that scarcely covers the basic basket. Much of the population lives in the countryside and export products are composed of raw materials with little value added which are sold at a low price on the global market.
This situation generated by savage capitalism—immersed in the world capitals market and besieged by the neoliberal measures inherited from liberal-conservative governments—which has led the people to look for alternatives on how to survive, either migrating to less industrialized cities, working on their own, relying on solidarity work of the family, or finally migrating abroad. An estimate of 10% of the Nicaraguan population has moved out the country to USA, Spain and Central America.
Nicaragua registers 6.2 million inhabitants with an equivalent of 1.2 million rural and urban families and an average of 5 people per nuclear family. Regarding occupation, the economically active population (EAP) is 3,190,100 (people between the ages 15 to 60 years of age who are either employed or unemployed and who are seeking employment). There is a total of 2,973,300 people employed as follows: 957,500 are full-time employees contributing to their social insurance; 425,225 people are partial or temporary workers; and 1,590,575 people are underemployed intermittently. There is a total of 216,800 unemployed, who represent a 6.8% unemployment rate.
Financing for production barely covers 20% of companies and producers in general. Out of this percentage, most producers are financed by savings and credit cooperatives and microfinance institutions; the rest of capitalists and producers are financed with their own funds.
One of the advantages of the Nicaraguan economy is its food self-sufficiency, achieved by peasants getting access to land. Despite earlier neoliberal policies, 80% of the farmland under 875-acre parcels nowadays is still in the hands of small and medium sized producers. This land ownership pattern is of course different from the situation prior to the 1979 Sandinista Revolution when landowners with over 875 acres of land controlled most of the land while most peasants had no access to land.
Despite growth in recent years, Nicaragua’s national economy is still extremely vulnerable to the international market, which has brought about specialization in extractive raw materials and an enclave economy; therefore, it requires a great effort to industrialize agricultural raw products so as to overcome underdevelopment. In recent years, the international market for Nicaraguan export products has diversified, expanding to Central America and Venezuela, although the main foreign market is still the United States.
In the following sections, there are a series of key indicators showing the contribution of each economic sector (corporate economy, people’s economy and public economy) to the national wealth as may be measured as follows: a) the weight of economic units (establishments or organizations); b) each sector’s contribution to employment or occupation; c) each sector’s weight national GDP, using three measureds : by production, primary income and gross disposable income; d) each sector’s contribution to capital investment; and e) the weight of each economic sector in relation to foreign currency.
V. The Economic Contribution of Each Sector to Establishments and Occupation
The attached tables describe the number of economic units or entities (establishments or organizations) and the employment generated by each economic sector, both in absolute figures (Table 1) and in percentages (Table 2). The economic units have been classified as follows: associations and foundations of producers (NGOs), cooperatives and workers' enterprises, small-sized urban and rural family production, indigenous and African-American communities, trade union organizations, self-employed workers (accounted for as units, regardless the number of employed or employed population they house).
In 2014, there were 813,760 economic entities or units in Nicaragua. If we consider that there were about 1,200,000 families with an average of 5 people per family and divide the calculation by the number of economic units, it turns out that each family employed a number of 7.3 people per economic entity. It should keep in mind that families are also economic social and entities, not only for their household labor but also the members of low income families carry out a significant part of the people’s economy activities
In the upper part of the enclosed tables, the number of Economic Entities appears firstly showing that 94.1% correspond to the people’s economy, 5.8% to the corporate economy and 0.1% to the public economy. As pointed out earlier, a family itself is an economic entity where women's work is not usually remunerated, accounted for and made visible. A percentage of women working at home receive a stipend from their partners or relatives, which they multiply (by adding value with their work), to achieve, albeit precariously, the reproduction of the family. The number of workers or people is always much greater than the number of economic units. For example, cooperatives, unions and enterprises, including self-employed families, include one or more individuals.
In terms of occupation or employment, the second line of the top part section of the tables breaks down the category of Employed Population by Occupation as follows: permanent paid workers, temporary paid workers, employers, cooperatives and other groups of paid workers, self-employed workers, unpaid workers or volunteers. The category employment has a general connotation more related to the wage paid than the labor performed while the term occupation refers more to the kind of work performed regardless of how income or compensation is perceived. While economic units totaled a little over 800,000, the number of workers or employed persons were 2,973,690.
Regarding the contribution of each economic sector, measured in percentages, we observe that 73.7% of employment is generated in the people’s economy, 21.1% in the corporate economy, and 5.3% in the public economy.
It is noteworthy that the vast majority of employment is found in the people’s economy. In other words, the corporate or capitalist economy has not complied with the liberal social pact of employment, instead forcing people to seek their own form of survival. And, they do so by contributing wealth to the country, not only do they generate some income for their households, but also they create food for themselves and for the entire population. It is worth mentioning that, in Nicaragua, the basic diet such as “gallo-pinto” (rice and beans), cheese, meat, fruits and vegetables are produced largely for self-consumption and the market by small and medium sized agriculture and livestock farmers, fishermen, and street vendors producing and selling any number of different food and drink products.
VI. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a Wealth Measurement
Since the past century and until recently, GDP has been used as the main indicator to measure a country’s wealth. More recently, other more complex indicators are being used where GDP is only a part along with other variables such as health, education, culture and even happiness. In this document, we will use only the GDP indicator to measure the wealth or contribution of the three economic sectors above mentioned to the national wealth. When we discuss the economy, we are referring to the units of production and service that help generate production, income for the different social classes and household spending on consumption. Therefore, we will set aside any criticisms about GDP’s limitations as an indicator, with which we agree, and, in due course, we will point them out.
GDP is the monetary value of the final goods and services produced in an economy during a given period. It also refers to all internal economic activity excluding changes in inventories or depreciation and appreciation of capital goods (e.g., buildings, machines, equipment, furniture and fixtures).
GDP is different from the national income or Net National Product (NNP) that is GDP minus depreciation of capital goods. In turn, the Net National Income (NNI) is the NNP minus the transfers or remittances sent abroad plus the transfers or remittances from abroad. In principle, NNI refers to the income from capital, but it also includes income from other sources such as family remittances. In some cases, the difference between GDP and NNI can be significant, for example, when a metropolitan or imperial economy depends on the economies of its overseas colonies and its NNI income is large in relation to what it produces domestically.
Conventionally, macroeconomic national accounts adopt three standards to measure GDP:
• The gross value of production (volume by the price of all goods). It corresponds to value added of production minus intermediate costs.
• The distribution or income of all economic sectors: income of the State (taxes and donations), income of employers, income of employees and income of producers (mixed income, since some income comes from profits and others from different forms of remuneration).
• The spending of all economic sectors, including expenses and consumption costs of families, the State, investors and producers. It has to do with the country’s domestic demand, domestic market or purchasing power of families among all social classes.
The GDP estimates must match or be the same regardless of the selected standard above (production, income or spending). In Nicaragua, for example, the GDP result in 2014 was US $ 11.5 million. However, the contribution of each sector (corporate economy and people’s economy) would be different according to the calculation we make through these standards. For example, if we do it through the contribution to production, the corporate economy appears to be contributing more to the GDP, because all the production in its economic units is attributed to the same corporate economy. On the other hand, if we calculate it by way of income or spending, which should also coincide, the people’s economy comes out better because the employees’ income, included as part of the people’s economy, would be allocated to the people’s economy. In fact, the income of the workers belongs to the people’s economy as argued above and not to the corporate economy. And, this is even without taking into consideration that the capital goods, raw materials and the labor cost salary are recovered by the capitalist through the sale of products,otherwise the capitalist would gain nothing —because the labor force provides both the replacement value and surplus appropriated by the capitalist. Nevertheless, we will not take our analysis that far, and we will instead measure the GDP as calculated in our national accounts: what is produced, what income is distributed, and what the spending is of each economic sector.
VII. Economic Contribution of Each Sector to the Available GDP
As mentioned above, one of the ways to measure the national wealth is through the GDP indicator, which is the result of the accumulation of all the aggregated values of each economic sector in a year. It was also implied that, to produce the economic wealth, it must meet an economic cycle, as an indispensable condition, that what is produced must be consumed; otherwise, there is no added value and wealth to enjoy. Even if the GDP shows inequality when calculated via spending, it must be equal to the one calculated via production. Therefore, the outcome depends on the form we use to create the GDP.
When the calculation is presented via production (value added), we observe that the people’s economy contributes 42.4 % to the GDP, the corporate economy 47.9% and the public economy 9.6%. The weight of the people’s economy corresponds to production in the hands of small economic units, cooperatives and workers-producers, both in the countryside and the city.
If the calculation is made through income or distribution, we note that the people’s economy contributes 55.7% to the GDP, the corporate economy 30.4% and the public economy 13.9 %. The increase in the contribution of the people’s economy by this method rests in the factor of wage compensation, in which the people’s economy contributes 73.7% to the total of the total national occupied population.
If the calculation is attained via the available income (available GDP), we recognize that the people’s economy contributes 61.8% to the GDP, the corporate economy 25.5 % and the public economy 12.7%. The significant increase shown in the people’s economy when it is calculated through the available income is explained by the contribution of family remittances from overseas, which in addition to being quite large compared to other items, are allocated 100% to the people’s economy.
The GDP indicator tells us that the three sectors, especially the families of the people’s economy, have this amount available to their disposal. However, this amount can be spent on internal or external consumption products, taxes, infrastructure (especially the public sector), taxes or investments. If we incorporate these last accounts, we would know the spending account. We did not include it for reasons of lack of time and space and so as not to make the present analysis too cumbersome. However, the main reason we skipped the spending account is because what interests us most is to show the weight of the disposable family income, thanks to the special category of the family remittances, which is generally barely taken into account.
Perhaps, people may be surprised that the people’s economy makes such a substantive contribution to the national wealth in terms of GDP, particularly in terms of income. The truth is that, despite the most impoverished popular sectors having very little income, the sum of their income is much greater than the capitalists’ income. For example, if we take one million workers who earn only two dollars a day each, which yields a sum of US$2.0 million of income-consumption per day, and we compare the sum with the total income of ten thousand capitalists who make US$100 a day each, we realize that the sum yields US$1.0 million although each capitalist makes more money.
Of course, in this case, family remittances are a strategic component increasing the income-currency-consumption among the poorest families in Nicaragua. We should also add to it the financial donations to government and non-governmental organizations, which mostly support lower-income people through social programs.
The following table shows a summary of the people’s economy’s contribution to Nicaragua’s national wealth (other related tables and charts with further details are shown earlier in this paper).
Contribution of the Economic Sectors to the National Wealth (in percentage)
Source: CIPRES
According to the number of establishments, the people’s economy made up of small and medium-sized establishments has most of the economic establishments in Nicaragua in comparison to the corporate economy composed of larger companies which has a much lower level of production. Likewise, both the income and spending generated by the small and medium-sized establishments yield a greater sum of income and spending than those of the corporate economy.
Some regional bodies have begun to calculate the weight of the so-called informal sector to the GDP, and even the concept and the way of calculating it is different, the results for the rest of the Latin American countries are similar to those we have in Nicaragua. As we will show concretely in the next chapters, this economic sector makes the greatest contribution to the GDP in the country.
Weight of the Informal Sector Relative to the GDP by Latin America Country (percentage)
Source: Notas Económicas Regionales No. 72, Feb 2015. Secretaria Ejecutiva del Consejo Monetario Centroamericano
VIII. Capital Investment by Economic Sector
Another indicator showing the role or weight of the different economic sectors, including the people’s economy, corporate economy, public economy, is national and foreign capital investment. Capital investment has increased over the past 10 years, especially from the public sector and foreign investment, which has contributed to increasing the productive economy in relation to the consumer economy, although the latter is still higher. Public sector investments in the construction of physical, social and energy infrastructure have been particularly financed by companies of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) framework.
In order to estimate and categorize the economic weight of each economic sector, the establishments are divided into large companies (more than 30 workers), medium (less than 30 workers) and small (less than 10 workers) excluding the heads of the economic units involved in the production of goods or services such as self-employed individuals that may themselves hire labor. To calculate the business sector’s contribution, we include all this stratification. So we get to classify the economic weight in accordance with the capital invested by each of the sectors we have been considering.
For example, the total capital investment of 2015 reached an amount of US$ 4,044.1 million, equivalent to 100% of the capital invested in the country by national and foreign sources. The capitalist sector contributed US$ 1,883.2 million corresponding to 46.8% of the total invested capital. The people’s economy invested US$1,278.6 million, equivalent to 31.6% of capital investment. The public sector invested US$880.8 million equivalent to 21.8% of all the capital investments. If we consider these figures, we would say that the capitalist sector in fact contributed more to capital investment. However, if we break down this figure, we observe that the local capitalist sector only invested US$1,047.2 million or 25.9% of the total capital investment in the country (less than the popular economy) while the foreign corporate sector contributed US$836 million or 21.8% of the capital invested in Nicaragua in 2015.
It is worth mentioning that during the period of the Sandinista government, between 2006 and 2015, the public sector invested more capital to the Nicaraguan economy, going from US$278.6 million in 2006 to US$880.8 million in 2015; this is due to the public investments supported by the ALBANISA program. For its part, the private sector, including the people’s economy and the corporate economy, went from US$ 1,517.3 million invested in 2006 to US$3,163.3 million in 2015. In other words, while public investment tripled, the private investment barely doubled.
Now, the contribution of each of the components of private capital investment (the local corporate sector, the foreign corporate sector and the people’s economy sector) should be analyzed to find out how these three sectors of private capital behave. The analysis shows that the combined capital investments by the local corporate sector and the people’s economy barely doubled while the investments from the foreign corporate sector almost tripled from US$287 million in 2006 to US$836 in 2006.
The data above show that the capital investments from both the public sector and the foreign corporate sector were essential for the national economy to have more than doubled, from US$1,795.9 million to US$4,044.1 million. Thus, the public sector doubled its percentage contribution from 10.9% of the total capital investments in 2006 to 21.8% in 2015 (+ 10.8%). During the same period, the percentage contribution of both the local and foreign corporate investments declined from 56.3% in 2006 to 46.6% (-9.7%). The capital investments in the people’s economy slightly decreased, having a weight of 32.8% in 2006 to 31.7% in 2015 (-1.1%). If we calculate and disaggregate the weight that foreign investments have with respect to the corporate economic sector, we can see that it went up from 19% in 2006 to 25.9% in 2015. Therefore, it can be inferred that the local corporate sector, regardless of its increasing in absolute terms, as did the whole economy, is the economic sector that had the lowest increase and made the lowest contribution to capital investments In other words, the investment of local capitalists have been decreasing in the last 10 years with respect to the rest of economic sectors in Nicaragua.
As shown below, we can categorically confirm that the people’s economy has the greatest economic weight in terms of capital investment with 31.6% compared to 20.9% in the foreign corporate sector, 21.6% in the public sector and 25.9% in the local business sector. Nevertheless, we should realize that the foreign investment is necessary due to the little capital that Nicaragua has. The multiplier effect of the foreign investment is less than we could hope for, partly because some investors such as the duty-free and tariff-free trade zones are operations importing certain material and equipment for assembly, processing, or manufacturing and then exporting the goods produced, restricting the value added exclusively to workers' wages, since these foreign capitalists repatriate much of their profits. Likewise, the increase in foreign investments is often to acquire existing economic establishments in such a manner that the portion of the capital value of the fixed assets does not alter the establishment’s actual value in the national economy. For example, in the decade from 2006 to 2015 that we are evaluating, we have seen a displacement of the local investments by foreign funds, mainly in banks, free-duty trade zones, textiles, supermarkets, mines, sugar mills, communications, energy, fishing, urban development and construction, tourism and the dairy and meat industries.
Capital Investment by Economic Sector (2015 in millions of dollars)
Source: CONACOOP/CIPRES, 2015 Projection, based on data prepared by the Central Bank of Nicaragua in 2006 and 2007, and the investment structure of the national accounts to formulate fixed assets, 2016 CEPAL report, and investment report in Nicaragua, and household census and surveys.
Given that farmland is part of the capital investment and considering that Nicaragua is an eminently agricultural country, we present the following classification table that describes how the farmlands on the hand of small and medium-sized producers (under 352 hectares) are much larger than the capitalist farmlands greater than 352 hectares. Based on the latest agricultural census, the table provides data on the significant change of farmland ownership as a result of the Sandinista agrarian reform of 1979, the periods of the first neoliberal government 1990-2001, and the second Sandinista government from 2007 to 2011. Therefore, the data reflect that, despite the neoliberal agrarian counter-reform, the small and medium producers, which make up the people’s economy, still maintain an 80% of ownership on the farmlands. This economic people’s sector has also been capitalized from the delivery in kind of a food production bonus granted to peasant families where ownership belongs to women. The total overall production bonus consists of 150,000 pregnant cows, 150,000 pregnant sows, 1,000,000 poultry and other goods that have been given to some 150,000 peasant women. This investment initiative has increased the number of agricultural producers and decreased migration from the countryside to the city.
Evolution of the Farmland Ownership by Strata (percentage)
Source: CIERA and Agriculture Census 2001, 2011
IX. Who Generates the Capital Investments or the Foreign Exchange Currencies?
In a capitalist market economy, capital is key to the functioning of the economy. Capital is a means of production, but it is also a social relation whose objective is to extract surpluses from economic units and their transactions. A surplus is what is left over after paying for all the costs, expenses and taxes of a business. It is equivalent to profit. Capital is expressed or manifested as money. All the countries of the world use a certain currency which is authorized to be accepted as wealth; it can be gold, silver, bronze coins, or it can be a note, a title or a credit card.
However, considering that all nations function in an interdependent world system, where it is essential to buy and sell abroad, that is, to export and import, a currency whose value is accepted throughout the world is required and is called foreign exchange currency. Today, the generally accepted world currency is the dollar. The currency belongs to a monetary sovereignty different from ours. Having foreign exchange currency or dollars is necessary for every country because with them you can buy goods and services that are not produced in the country. For less industrialized countries like ours, the currency is important because many industrial goods, called capital goods (tools, equipment and processed products) are not produced locally, and they must be purchased abroad. Nowadays, production is increasingly driven by capital goods and less by the work force - even products such as corn and beans, need tractors, trucks, inorganic inputs and fuel to be able to produce them. This means that these products can hardly be produced without having access to the foreign currency.
In short, the less industrialized we are, the more foreign currency we need. And, how do we get such currency? There are several ways to acquire foreign exchange currency. First, exporting or, rather, exporting more than we import and saving what we have left to invest. In the case of Nicaragua, it is assumed that by exporting coffee or sugar we obtain foreign exchange with which to acquire the equipment or capital goods needed for the coffee and sugar to be produced. This is reason why it is said that large, medium or small sized exporters, even if they export raw materials, are the ones that generate the foreign currency, which, in turn, it is used to both purchase the capital goods to produce some goods and services and import other goods and services we do not produce. Of course, to produce coffee or sugar workers are still needed who also need to purchase goods that are not produced in the country, such as certain clothing or housing materials.
We should also ask and include in the analysis how much foreign exchange currency, capitalists spend to create every dollar entering the country. But instead, let us focus on our original question and answer who produces the wealth, in this instance, the capital or the foreign currency needed to be able to produce and consume. Before proceeding to measure the contribution to the national wealth of each of the economic sectors (people’s economy, corporate economy and public economy), we will briefly describe Nicaragua’s balance of payments.
The economic operations of any country are accounted for under an exercise or concept called Balance of Payments, which includes: the current account balance, the capital accounts, the financial accounts and an additional account to adjust the previous accounts, which is called the error and omission account. In turn, the balance of the current account includes: a) The trade balance or the sum of exports minus imports; b) The balance of services, or difference between the services we provide abroad and those that provide us from abroad; c) The balance of primary income, namely the difference between income foreign companies repatriate abroad and income Nicaraguan companies overseas repatriate to Nicaragua; and d) The balance of income or secondary income that is received from abroad, occupying a very important place in Nicaragua, namely the family remittances or foreign exchange currency that national migrants send to their relatives from abroad.
In 2014, the Nicaragua’s Current Account balance was in deficit by US$838.1 million, approximately. The first reason was due to the deficit in the trade balance or difference between exports and imports. Nicaragua exported US$3,600 million and imported US$6,000 million, causing a deficit of US$2,400 million. The balance of services slightly lightened the deficit of the trade balance as the services generated US$428 million, mainly from tourism, decreasing a little the deficit in the trade balance. Thus, the balance in goods and services still recorded a deficit of US$1,972 million.
Moving on to the analysis of the Current Account, we must include the account of the primary income (income and payments), that is, what the Nicaraguan economic units domiciled overseas less what the foreign economic units in Nicaragua transfer out the country. The primary income account had a negative balance of US$307 million, which increased the Current Account deficit to US$2,273 million (US$1,972 plus US$307). When we merge the secondary income account, which accounted for US$1,442 million of family remittances from abroad, the deficit of the Current Account is reduced to US$837 million (US$2,280 minus US$1,442).
Now, if the foreign currency deficit is US$837 million (based on the 2014-year analysis above), how does Nicaragua manage to close the gap? The Current Account deficit will be offset primarily by the Capital Account, which is made up of foreign donations to the State and Non-Governmental Organizations that, in 2014, exceeded US$275 million, decreasing the deficit to US$562 million (US$837 minus US$275). Later, we will see how Nicaragua solve this deficit, but first we want to comment on the paramount role of the people’s economy in supplying liquid currencies to the Nicaraguan economy.
If we make a first balance of currencies and relate it to the contribution of each sector of the economy, such as the corporate economy and the people’s economy, we would have to conclude that while the economy as a whole has an external deficit of goods and services, more than half of this deficit is offset by family remittances from migrant workers from abroad. With the great difference that family remittances are made up of completely liquid currencies, because migrants do not even “eat” (consume or spend) in Nicaragua. And, if the currencies in a country that imports most of the capital industrial goods, constitute the main source of wealth and the weight of the net or liquid currency is contributed by the popular economy, then, our answer is that the popular economy is the sector that produces the most wealth in Nicaragua.
In a first balance of foreign currency related to the contribution of each economic sector, we observe that, while the economy has an external deficit in the current Account (goods and services), more than half of the deficit is balanced by the family remittances coming from of migrant Nicaraguan workers. This takes into consideration that family businesses are made up of completely liquid currencies because migrants do not consume (spend) within the country. If the foreign currencies in a country, with which most of the capital goods are imported, constitute the main source of wealth, and if most of the net currencies are contributed by the people’s economy, then our thesis is reinforced that the people’s economy is the economic sector that produces the most wealth in Nicaragua.
We should not dismiss that both the corporate sector and the public sector greatly contribute to the country's production of foreign currency through exports. However, we should remember that exports generate a gross value of foreign currency and when we subtract the costs of imports, which are largely spent precisely to produce the exports, the balance of foreign currency is in principle negative. The key proof is the trade deficit, namely the difference between exports and imports. In other words, we Nicaraguans spend more in foreign exchange than we produce or generate foreign currencies. There is also production for the domestic market, as a portion of food consumption, which in turn reduces the spending of foreign currency as the items are locally produced by the people’s economy whose component in capital or foreign currency is low. If we counted the expenses of what would have to be spent on the import of corn or beans, which are mostly produced by peasants, we would have to conclude that the savings in foreign currency by the people’s economy is as great as its contribution in generating foreign currency.
Another method of weighing the contribution of the people’s economy is to estimate how much foreign currency Nicaragua would need to import basic grains (corn, rice and beans) as other Latin American countries have to. The following table shows the cost in foreign exchange currency (US dollars) of the corn and rice produced and consumed locally, which reveals that the cost would be more than US$400 million per year.
Estimated Savings in Foreign Currencies by the Local Production of Basic Grains
Regarding the national deficit, one might ask, how does Nicaragua pay for the difference between what it spends and what it generates? Or, how does it run its economy despite still having a deficit of approximately US$ 562 million. Like any person or company that spends more than it earns, Nicaragua has no other choice but to borrow money.
Presently, Nicaragua has a public debt of US$9.5 billion, broken down into US$5.0 billion of external public debt, US$1.0 billion of public-private debt, and US$3.5 billion of private debt. The external public debt contracts mainly (85%) with multilateral organizations such as Inter American Development Bank, World Bank and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration; although lately it has become common for the private sector, both national and foreign, to also contract credit with these organizations.
Continuing with the analysis that we left pending on the Balance of Payments in relation to the way in which Nicaragua must close its deficit accounts, we now move on to incorporate the Financial Account, which records both loans and investments. Nicaragua records net liabilities incurred amounting to US$618 million in 2014 that would close the deficit and still leave a portion to supply to its reserve assets, which, in turn, records US$281 million during the same period.
The rest of the financial account has to do with direct investment, particularly external, as well as other investments. It is assumed that a significant portion of imports and exports correspond to foreign capital investments. In other words, and not considering that a large part of foreign investment is reflected in imports and exports, its contribution does not reduce the accounts.
One might venture to question that there are companies or economic units that produce foreign currencies while others do not, some being national and others foreign, which is all true. In Nicaragua, the products that generate the most foreign exchange are beef and dairy cattle, coffee, tourism, peanuts and gold. In all these activities we find the corporate economy and the people’s economy producing the same products, either as capitalists, as small-scale producers or salaried workers. There are also economic units that generate foreign exchange, but they send any surplus or profit they make abroad, including the Asian or US Free Zones or the Canadian mining corporations. Thus, there are economic units that spend a lot of foreign currency on production, but not all the foreign exchange they generate stays in Nicaragua.
Generally, in Nicaragua, those who spend the most foreign currency are the capitalists, who spend seventy cents for every dollar they generate while the people’s economy spends only thirty cents for every dollar it creates. And, not only does this happen in relation to production, but also in relation to consumption, since the corporate owners and their families consume more imported goods than the members of the people’s economy. Therefore, the capitalists consume the most foreign currency, but they are not necessarily the ones that contribute the most to the country's foreign exchange earnings.
There are also companies such as sugar cane mills that sell their products abroad at a low price close to the cost of production, and subsidize their deficit by selling sugar at high prices in the local market, practically double the international price. If we add this variable to our analysis, we would see that the economic contribution of the corporate sector is even worse. Furthermore, the results of the analysis would be even more unfavorable for the capitalists if we consider the fact that some local Nicaraguan companies are moving towards the free trade zone regime so as to avoid local taxes.
We can conclude that most of the wealth of Nicaragua is primarily created by the people’s economy; understanding wealth as the sum of local and public economic units or establishments (including family units) and the economic activities for the production of goods and services for domestic consumption and exports, the generation of employment, the creation of foreign currencies, and the spending for production and consumption. All these figures, in absolute and percentage terms, appear in the tables later listed in this document, strengthening their visualization with some bar graphs.
It is necessary to add what is already well known to all of us: the great paradox of the capitalist market economy. How is it that if the people’s economy creates most of Nicaragua’s wealth, its members live impoverished? The answer is simple. In a capitalist economy, the one who has capital (money) controls and monopolizes national wealth. It is also known that the economic units of the people’s economy despite being basic links of the value chain have little access to value added because they lack capital, technology and business expertise. The unequal exchange of relative prices is notorious, not only in relation to foreign markets, but also within the domestic economy between the prices of the people’s economy, mainly peasant and artisanal production, compared to goods produced by large industrial companies or goods sold in the urban market.
If this is so, as can be seen from the figures presented herein, then public policy should prioritize the social and economic integration of the popular economy’s economic units and productive workers into the overall agenda of Nicaragua’s national human development plan, eradicating poverty, increasing social welfare and strengthening the economy, including access to food, housing, health, education, transportation, credit, energy and technology.
Thus, it is no accident that the Human Development Plan of the Government of National Reconciliation and Unity, headed by the Sandinista Front, has formed a ministry called Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy (MEFCCA).
X. The Cooperative Sector
One sector of the people’s economy with a significant associative degree is made up of cooperatives and indigenous communities. Here, we will focus on cooperatives considering that cooperativism is one of the solutions to prevent the people’s economy from being reduced to impoverished popular capitalism. As the economic agents of the people’s economy organize into cooperatives, they have more opportunity to climb to higher levels of the value chain.
The cooperative sector has had a very uneven evolution in the history of Nicaragua. In the 1930s, cooperativism was born from the Sandino’s guerrillas and the first organized cooperative in Wiwili was broken up and its members killed by the troops of the emerging Somoza’s National Guard. Following the Sandinista Popular Revolution of 1979, cooperativism received a great boost, but it was a priority objective of the counterrevolutionary war and many of the agricultural cooperatives became self-defense cooperatives with the consequent erosion in the productive activities. Then, during the 17 years of the neoliberal governments (1990-2007), cooperatives and peasants were discriminated against, denied access to national credit; one reason why the cooperative production was decimated during that period.
In 2007, with the advent of a second term of Sandinista government, the cooperatives begin to recover. Presently, the Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy (MEFCCA), operates in a decentralized manner through the municipalities to better serve the cooperative sector.
As at 2015, there are 5,100 registered cooperatives, of which 25% are still formalizing their legal status in the institutions that represent the cooperatives. These cooperatives offer employment to 500,000 people approximately, although only 25% of them offer a remunerated occupation in pecuniary terms. Knowing that 70% of the workforce is composed of small producers, as well as self-employed workers, the cooperative population barely reaches 20%, without considering most of the population with the potential to organize into consumer cooperatives. In the last few years, despite this situation, the cooperative sector is advancing rapidly in its organization through 169 organizations integrated in centrals and unions and 10 federations. Likewise, there is a great boost in the access of the cooperatives to storage capacity, commercialization, processing and export networks of their production.
Cooperatives contribute 17% GDP and their growth in recent years is around 6%. More than 30% of the cooperatives are agricultural, but there is a great development in the cooperatives of transport, manufacturing, commerce, credit and other services. Cooperatives participate in 28% of the wholesale and retail trade; credit unions offer credit services to the vast majority of local borrowers; the cooperatives of transport control 95% of the urban public transport; agricultural cooperatives produce, collect, process and market most of sesame seeds, 20% of basic grains, 18% of vegetables, 30% of coffee exports, 46% of dairy products exports, 50% of the rearing of chicken and bovine and porcine cattle. Other cooperatives contribute to 31% of the community services, including recycling and 10% of the exportation of mines and quarries.
During the second period of Sandinista government (2007-2017), the number of cooperatives, associates, workers, employees and wealth produced has increased significantly. Likewise, the participation of women as members and managers in the cooperatives is growing and half of all the members are women. In addition, there are many women organized in the two most emblematic programs of the Sandinista government: the program of food-production bonus called "Hambre Cero” (Zero Hunger) and the solidarity credit called "Usura Cero" (Zero Usury). These programs bring together nearly 300,000 women, making up the potentially largest form of cooperativism in the country. The table below shows the growth of cooperativism between the years 2006 and 2014.
One of the biggest advantages of the Nicaraguan cooperative movement is its degree of organization around the National Council of Cooperatives (CONACOOP) composed of the Departmental Council of Cooperatives (CODECOOP) of the 17 departments or regions making up Nicaragua’s geopolitical administration. The CONACOOP board of directors is made up of the representatives of each departmental CODECOOP, who are themselves elected by popular vote, and representatives of the different productive sectors. CONACOOP participates in the different production, commercialization and consumption committees convened by the Government. It also maintains close relations with the MEFCCA, the National Tax Office and the National Police.
XI. Statistics of Key Indicators for the People’s Economy
The following charts and tables describe the contribution or weight of each economic sector as of 2014, according to the number of economic units, employment occupation, GDP as measured by the value added, the primary income and the gross disposable national income.
Cooperatives by Economic Activity and Number of Associates (2006-2014)
Source: Registros MEFCCA-2013 y Gaceta 2014 y 2015
Note: Credit Unions are cooperatives of multiple services and are involved in the agricultural sector.
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Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
Table 4
Table 5
Table 6
Table 7: Summary of Contribution of the People’s Economy to the National Income from the Perspective of the Income Available
(Estimate in US$ Million as of 2014)
Sources: CIPRES, based on IV CENAGRO; Urban Census 2010; (BCN) Annual Surveys on Industry, Commerce and Services; MEFCCA’s Registry of Cooperatives; 2011-2012 Survey; 2005 Population Census and Sectorial Evaluations
Table 8: Summary of Contribution of the People’s Economy to the National Income from the Perspective of the Income Available
(Estimate in Percentage Based on Table 7 as of 2014)
Sources: CIPRES, based on IV CENAGRO; Urban Census 2010; (BCN) Annual Surveys on Industry, Commerce and Services; MEFCCA’s Registry of Cooperatives; 2011-2012 Survey; 2005 Population Census and Sectorial Evaluations