Análisis comparativo en la era sucre y la era dólar de la competitividad y la generación de valor del sector bananero ecuatoriano en mercados de EE.UU.

Abstract

Changing a monetary system causes alterations to the development of economic activities in human groups; transformations that can be irreversible and that can be observed in a specificity of the economy. Banana activity, a sector that since the middle of the last century has promoted the generation of value and Ecuadorian competitiveness, serves as the axis of analysis to understand any alteration caused by the use of a foreign currency, the US dollar, instead of our own money. Mainly exporter, it trades with the issuing market of the current currency, the United States of North America, therefore, the change in the monetary regime and its impact on the competitiveness and the generation of value of the Ecuadorian bananas in the US market are analyzed. With interviews to experts involved, the official data collected by the comparative study between scenarios is contrasted: the period of the sucre versus the dollarized period, limiting them with congruent time series of 20 years and separating the year 2000 as the breaking point, the year of the monetary transition. The result shows that the creation of value is more linked to the reality of the actors, the companies, where more factors intervene than just the exchange rate or the currency used in commercial transactions. Markets condition value through product competitiveness, adaptability and strategy, compared to competitors in the region because, in the case studied, the elasticity of exports to a variation in the exchange rate is very small. The particularity of exporting to a market that works with the same currency only allows that there are no negative effects generated by the exchange rate, but competing countries that handle another currency have the ability to become more competitive when they change their exchange value.