Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno declared a nationwide state of emergency on Thursday amid violent protests across the country over the end of fuel subsidies that have been in place for decades. Protests erupted in the Latin American oil producer—a member of OPEC that has just announced its intention to quit the cartel—after Moreno said that the fuel subsidies that had been in place for 40 years would end. According to Moreno, in office since 2017, the fuel subsidy is “perverse” and has distorted Ecuador’s economy over the past few decades. The country can no longer afford the costly subsidy, the president says as he pushed through with a US$2 billion package of fiscal reforms. The fuel subsidies cost the government of Ecuador as much as US$1.3 billion every year, according to the BBC . The end of the subsidy, however, is more than doubling gasoline and diesel prices in […]