Thousands of pensioners queued from early morning yesterday outside banks in Quito to withdraw monthly benefit payments which have lost 50 per cent of their value in the past month alone, in line with the declining value of the sucre, Ecuador's currency.
"If I eat once a day the pension lasts a week," explained Rosa Duran, a retired nurse, who waited three hours to receive her monthly 500,000 sucres.
A year ago Ms Duran's pension was worth $75; today it is worth just $17. An estimated four million Ecuadorans, or 30 per cent of the population, survive on just $45 a month, when the average food basket costs four times that amount.
There was little sign of support for the new President, Dr Gustavo Noboa, who has pledged to continue the economic policy of his predecessor, Mr Jamil Mahuad, ousted after mass protests last weekend.
"I hope they come back and finish the job," added Ms Duran, referring to the frustrated efforts of the indigenous to replace Ecuador's discredited congress with a "government of national reconstruction," which would include Indian people, labour, army and religious representatives.
The former president, Mr Mahuad, reacted to the deepening economic crisis by freezing bank accounts last year, while two weeks ago Mr Mahuad drew up the "Law of Stabilisation" which would scrap the sucre for the US dollar.
The measure would curb inflation and allow the country to borrow money at US interest rates, thereby improving the nation's image with foreign investors.
Indigenous and labour leaders denounced the plan as little more than a lifeline to corrupt bankers and big business, as the majority poor watched food items double in price over the past fortnight.
In addition the dollarisation of the economy would wipe out much of the value of frozen savings accounts, which were deposited in sucres, at 7,000 to the dollar, but will be withdrawn at 25,000 to the dollar, at the current exchange rate.
The mishandling of the economic crisis cost Mr Mahuad his job last Saturday, while Dr Noboa is the fourth president to take office in two years.
In the past century Ecuador has relied on single cash crops to support its economy, first textiles, then cocoa, bananas and finally oil, all of which backfired on the economy when world prices collapsed.
Mr Mahuad aroused popular indignation when he froze the nation's bank accounts last March yet paid out $700 million to one bank, to keep it afloat.
Thousands of small accountholders, many of them pensioners, fear they may die before they ever see the small nest eggs they deposited in banks.