During his 1 July state of the nation address, President Lugo praised last year’s impressive economic growth, although he conceded that in spite of this, great social inequality persisted: “the needs and social demands surpass the state’s capacity of response in financial, human and institutional terms,” he said. Still, growth on that scale will raise expectations of a trickle-down effect. Lugo did not provide poverty figures for 2010 but those for 2009 (35.1%) showed a negligible improvement on 2008 (37.9%), when he took power. Indigence barely fell, from 19% to 18.8%, over the same period. Landless groups are also getting restless as Lugo has failed to deliver on land reform: on 5 July local authorities in the southern department of Alto Paraná declared a state of emergency in the wake of a series of land invasions.
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