has pegged its currency to the U.S. dollar since 1993, while all the other countries have exchange systems that allow for some degree of exchange flexibility. The education and health sectors in all of these countries have seen a dramatic turnaround partly due to the increased availability in external funds for social problems provided by postwar reconstruction in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. While Costa Rica continued to place these two items high on their social services lists . A major set back hit most of Central America in the fall of 1998. For four days Hurricane Mitch devastated Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala with four feet of rain . It created waves 40 to 50 feet high off of the coast of Honduras. This caused massive mudslides, swept away bridges, roads, and villages. This storm left over 10,000 people dead and millions left homeless. This disaster is going to hit these countries hard economically too. In Nicaragua, an estimated 67 percent of the Gross Domestic Product was lost do to crop damage from the storm . After this hurricane most of the nations of Central America were at a standstill. Hundreds of millions of dollars, however, have begun to poor out of other nations pockets to aid the hurt countries. Millions more are also coming from private organizations, mostly religiously affiliated. This could prove to be a good turnaround for the people of these countries, because there will be jobs needed to be filled in construction, and many people there to fill them. These pictures show the size of Hurricane Mitch. This picture has been altered to show the size of the storm-compared toe the size of each country.Looking ahead, these nation face difficult challenges in recovering from the recent disaster hurricane Mitch, strengthening their social policies, improving external competitiveness, and reducing poverty levels. More needs to be done in Nicaragua and Honduras to ease them off of the ...
