Andean Group - December 2011 (ISSN 1741-4466)

Poverty: The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac)’s 2011 Social Panorama of Latin America, released last month, revealed that Bolivia’s rates of poverty and extreme poverty had dropped to 54% and 31.2% in 2009 respectively, down from 62.4% and 37.1% in 2002. The change has been attributed to conditional cash transfer programmes developed by the Morales government with hydrocarbons revenue. Chief of these are: the Bono Juancito Pinto, a US$30 subsidy for school children introduced in 2006 which benefits some 1.8m children; the Renta Dignidad, a universal programme for Bolivians over 60 who lack pensions, which was established in 2008 and benefits some 880,000 people; and the Bono Juana Azurduy, started in May 2009, which benefits pregnant women or those with children under two years of age. The 2012 State budget has ear-marked US$405m for these programmes, a 24% increase on 2011.

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