818.51/8–3044
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Costa Rica ( Trueblood )
The Secretary of State encloses, at the request of the Export-Import Bank, for transmission to the Costa Rican Minister of Finance8 a letter addressed to him on August 23, 1944, by the President of the Bank.9
The particular attention of the Embassy is directed to the last paragraph of the Bank’s letter stating that: “In view of the foregoing as well as the intention of your Government to buttress President Picado’s fiscal policies by the adoption of various reforms recommended by Messrs. Ness and Kekich,10 we believe, Mr. Minister, that you will concur in the opinion that consideration of an amendment of our Agreement of July 9, 194211 should be postponed.” The Bank refers to a number of recommendations for the improvement and strengthening of the methods of handling Costa Rican finances suggested by Messrs. Ness and Kekich of the United States Treasury Department who, it will be recalled, made studies of the Costa Rican fiscal situation in 1942 and 1943 at the request of that Government.
For the Embassy’s confidential information, during the recent discussions in Washington Señor Peña12 suggested that if the Bank13 agreed to the proposed amendment to the 1942 agreement, it should do so only on condition that the Costa Rican Government adopt the fiscal reforms which it had said it intended to make.
- Alvaro Bonilla Lara.↩
- Warren Lee Pierson; letter not printed.↩
- Thomas Kekich, Bureau of Accounts, Treasury Department.↩
- This loan agreement, not printed, was drafted in accordance with terms described in Department’s telegram 264, June 27, 1942, 3 p.m., to San José, Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. vi, p. 251.↩
- Julio Peña Morua, General Manager of the National Bank of Costa Rica.↩
- Presumably the Export-Import Bank of Washington.↩