The Central American nation's central bank predicted at the beginning of September that the economy would grow 3.5 percent in 2006. Gross domestic product rose 2.8 percent last year.

Delivered to Congress by Finance Minister William Handal, the annual budget bill also forecast inflation between 2 and 3 percent next year in the country, which uses the U.S. dollar as its currency.

It said remittances from abroad, a major source of income, would grow 18.4 percent next year to $3.575 billion.

When U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador H. Douglas Barclay finishes his three-year tour of duty in a little more than three months, he will turn another page in a storied career.

Although the 74-year-old Pulaski resident doesn’t know yet where the next phase of life will take him, you can be sure it won’t be to a rocking chair on his expansive Douglaston Manor in the town of Richland.

In an exclusive phone interview with Oswego County Business Magazine Wednesday, Barclay said the transition process is under way. A Senate hearing was held Wednesday to take testimony on his nominated successor, Charles Glazer, 63, an investment banker from Greenwich, Conn.

Since the Senate is scheduled to adjourn Friday for the November elections, Glazer’s nomination will probably not come up for full Senate confirmation until mid- to late-November at the earliest.

Barclay says he will leave with mixed emotions. He said he is proud of the team effort he fostered at the embassy in the capital, San Salvador.

“Getting everybody going in the same direction was important,” he said. “We have a good team.”

He also has made it a point to study Spanish daily and learn the native language of the country in which he is serving.

He downplayed his proficiency, but his chief aide, Rebecca Thompson, insisted that the ambassador is much too self-effacing.

“He has made such progress,” she says. “He is diligent and studies so hard, and after every public appearance (he makes official addresses in Spanish), people remark—without prompting—about how proficient he was,” she adds.

His main disappointment is a surge in crime during the last six months, which he fears will hamper economic development. Much of this uptick can be traced to drug-dealing gangs.

The economy has shown impressive gains this year with the gross domestic product up by 4 to 4.5 percent compared to 1.5 to 2.5 percent the year before, Barclay says.

With the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) kicking in, Barclay said another percentage point can be added, provided that crime and corruption do not snuff out growth.

Barclay’s wife, Sara—she’s best known as Dee Dee—will rejoin her husband next week. She has been in Pulaski readying their home for their return, probably in January.

Barclay was appointed to the $142,500-a-year job by Bush in the fall of 2003. He was confirmed by the Senate less than two months later.

The World Health Organization, in a sign that widely used methods of fighting malaria have failed to bring the catastrophic disease under control, plans to announce today that it will encourage the use of DDT, even though the pesticide is banned or tightly restricted in much of the world.

The new guidelines from the United Nations public-health agency support the spraying of small amounts of DDT, or dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, on walls and other surfaces inside homes in areas at highest risk of malaria. The mosquito-borne disease infects as many as 500 million people a year and kills about a million. Most victims are in sub-Saharan Africa and under the age of 5.

[The CDC reports rural areas of the departments of Santa Ana, Ahuachapán, and La Unión in El Salvador are at risk for malaria.]