Nicaragua President Enrique Bolanos issued an emergency decree Monday, allowing him to raise electric prices as demanded by producers.
The decree announcing the state of emergency was read over state radio. The government said the measure was needed "to assure economic stability and flows of foreign aid."
Bolanos said he hoped to ensure that Nicaragua "does not return to the dark night," a barbed reference to the frequent power outages of the 1980s, when the left-wing Sandinista government was in power.
Bolanos took the unusually dramatic move in response to energy producers who have been calling for rate increases to offset their rising costs. His government had been unable to meet those demands because the official commission that sets the prices has no director and therefore cannot act officially.
