Adjustments to public agencies after optimization announcement
The government applied a regime of institutional optimization and merged and abolished eight agencies attached to the Executive branch in the last three months.
The National Secretariat of Planning and Development (Senplades) developed last year a report on the optimization of the government structure, which remained unknown, because President Rafael Correa refused to disclose it due to concerns of servers by possible layoffs, as he questioned during a weekly address on September 2015.
The then head of the Senplades, Pabel Muñoz, justified that “reduction” was not the best word, but fusion. “It could be optimizations in institutes, public enterprises and State portfolios,” he said in August 2015, when he was still secretary.
Months later, the president began to order the abolition and merging of agencies through decrees. The first were issued on November 17th, with the extinction of the Transport Research Institute, and its powers and functions were transferred to the Ministry of Transport. (I)