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US to help Ecuador get credit after it dollarizes

QUITO, Ecuador, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary for International Affairs Edwin Truman said on Monday his government would help Ecuador obtain credit after the South American nation adopts the dollar as its main currency.

``We have every intention to support this plan through international financial organizations,'' Truman told reporters after meeting President Gustavo Noboa to discuss a bill to dollarize the economy currently in Congress. ``We can offer all our support for this economic program once it is installed.''

Washington hopes Ecuador's adoption of the dollar will be the ``base by which stability'' returns to the Andean nation and facilitates its recovery, including lifting the moratorium on its public foreign debt. The bill is expected to go to a vote in the country's Congress Monday night.

Truman said the United States was ``very optimistic'' about Quito's economic reforms and emphasized that the measures would curry more support with the International Monetary Fund, with which Ecuador is in prolonged talks to secure a credit facility.

Ecuador is struggling through its worst socio-economic crisis in five decades. Its public foreign debt of more than $13 billion was equal to gross domestic product last year and inflation reached 60.7 percent while its currency, the sucre, shed two-thirds of its value.