El Salvador project 519-0287 · 1985–1995 · Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development

Final evaluation of USAID's assistance to the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUSADES) under projects 5190287, -0327, and -0336 (1984-94). USAID's assistance to FUSADES has become controversial in some circles due to its unprecedented massive scale (totaling about $115 million) as well as the highly political, and not merely economic, nature of FUSADES's interventions during a period of violent civil war. Overall, the evidence indicates that FUSADES played an important and possibly crucial role in sustaining and strengthening democratic institutions during the civil war. There is evidence that El Salvador's emergence with a booming economy (5.1% GNP growth in 1994, with a forecast of 5.5% in 1995 with 10% inflation) and a laudable democratic process following the country's transition to peace and democracy was to a large extent due to FUSADES. It is also likely that El Salvador's economic growth will continue, though at a more modest rate. Politically, FUSADES strengthened El Salvador's two-party system at a time when many questioned whether a peaceful transition of leadership was possible. It was FUSADES, for example, that developed Alfredo Cristiani's

Source: DEC abstract, PD-ABM-867 (1995). The source's own text.