Bolivia unveils anti-poverty plan
The government of Bolivia has announced a radical plan to reduce poverty and create employment in the poorest country in South America.
Almost $7bn (£3.8bn) will be invested in ambitious public works programmes.
The economic plan announced by Planning and Development Minister Carlos Villegas aims to create 100,000 jobs a year for the next five years.
It is the latest measure in a series implemented by President Evo Morales since taking office in January.
The people of South America, and especially Bolivia, have often heard their leaders promise to reduce poverty and create jobs.
But President Morales appears to mean it and many Bolivians believe what he says.
The money will come from the recently nationalised gas industry, supplemented by international lending and foreign investment.
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Peru still wary of Garcia’s past
Alan Garcia’s first term as president of Peru from 1985 to 1990 is now used by ardent free-marketeers as a textbook example of how to ruin a country’s economy.
And although he proclaims himself a changed man since those days, voters who saw him as the lesser of two evils will be hoping that his return to office will not be equally disastrous.
During Mr Garcia’s previous five years in power, prices went up by more than two million per cent as his government printed money to maintain high levels of public spending.
The ravages of chronic inflation took their toll on the currency, the inti, which was subsequently replaced by a new unit, the sol, at an exchange rate of a million intis to one sol.
During the same period, the number of Peruvians living in poverty went up by five million, rising from 41.6% to 55% of the population. Peru’s gross domestic product shrank by one-fifth.
Yup, and which of these two is ‘our man’ in the Andes?