Weekly Report - 20 September 2005

BOLIVIA | Economic diversification urgently needed. If Bolivia's per capita growth rate continues at the current 0.3% yearly, and the ranks of the poor continue to be swelled at a rate of 174,000 a year, it will take Bolivia 178 years to pull itself out of poverty. That dire forecast come from recently-released UNDP study, La economí­a más allá del gas ('The economy beyond gas'). It says the main problem is not so much the free-market economic model but the pattern of development based main on exporting gas and a few other primary products. 'If the Bolivian economy continues to revolve around natural resources,' says the study, 'it will continue to forget the need to link jobs with income, maintaining and exclusive system that benefits a few, and will be unable to raise its performance or improve the lives of its inhabitants.'

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