Weekly Report - 09 February 2012 (WR-12-06)

CUBA | Inequality. Latin American countries can “learn a lot from Cuba” to reduce inequality, the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac), Alicia Bárcena, said during a visit to Havana this week. As poverty has progressively fallen in Latin America, Eclac has been focusing more and more on inequality. “We have the horror of being the most unequal region in the world,” Bárcena said. “The most egalitarian countries in Latin America are Cuba and Uruguay by a distance.” Unlike Uruguay, Cuba’s comparative equality, and notable advances on education and health, has come at the cost of political freedom but also kept all but top members of the Communist party equally poor. The current economic reforms are also likely to increase inequality: meat prices jumped 8.7% and produce prices 24.1% in 2011, according to official statistics.

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