And interest rates may be liberalised for certain accounts at designated firms inside the SFTZ.What does this add up to? Louis Kuijs of RBS, a British bank, believes the pronouncement belies the hope that the borders of the SFTZ would be porous enough to expose the rest of the country to financial reform through leakage.
All the same interest groups that have blocked liberalising reforms for years continue to do so.
He also promises liberalising reforms: for example, to the land registry, in an effort to break the land mafia and spur construction.
These include taking too prominent a role in government instead of relying on his prime minister; allowing a bling-bling image to take hold and being seen as a friend of the rich; and turning away from the liberalising reforms for which he once campaigned.
Data derived from household surveys show that income inequality across Latin America as a whole declined slightly in the 1970s, increased during the 1980s (the debt-ridden "lost decade") and showed no clear pattern in the liberalising 1990s.Take, for example, the Gini coefficient, a statistical measure of inequality in which zero expresses complete equality.
In return, these countries are expected gradually to liberalise access for EU imports.
Last month they voted down a proposal to liberalise commissions for larger trades.
The rest of the EU has followed suit on sanctions against top officials, but could do more to liberalise travel for citizens.
But they are also the consequence of a deadly complacency that has led the country to miss a great opportunity.During the 2003-08 boom, when reforms would have been relatively easy to introduce, the government failed to liberalise markets for labour, energy and land.
Capital controlsAdmittedly, in its routine surveillance missions, prior to the Asian crisis, the IMF may have sometimes tilted too far towards benign neglect as countries prematurely liberalised markets for short-term capital movements, before the internal regulatory structure was in place to handle them.
