Andean Group - February 2011 (ISSN 1741-4466)

Following his annual state-of-the-union address delivered in January, Morales was highly criticised by the opposition for covering the economic achievements of the last five years of his mandate rather than the customary past 12 months. This, his critics argued, was an attempt to deflect from his government's recent difficulties (particularly in relation to the gasolinazo and inflation), serving to distort his achievements. Thus, he was able to boast for example that under his five year mandate, economic growth had averaged 4.1% per year, up from the 3.1% in the five preceding years, despite GDP growth of 4.2% in 2010 being lower than the regional 6% average. In his speech, Morales pointed to an increase in public investment, from an annual average of US$591m between 2001 and 2005 to US$1.558bn between 2006 and 2010 as well as a reduction in the fiscal deficit - to an average of 2.3% in the last five years down from 6.3% between 2001 and 2005.

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