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  • Bolivian President Evo Morales

    Bolivian President Evo Morales | Photo: ABI

President Morales’ new development plan will invest in higher education and building homes.

Extreme poverty in Bolivia is expected to drop to 9.5 percent by 2020, President Evo Morales announced Tuesday.

The Bolivian head of state made the announcement while presenting his social and economic development plan for the next five years, which seeks to tackle major socio-economic gaps between the poor and wealthy.

The drop would represent a 54 percent decrease from the current extreme poverty rate of 21 percent, which itself is a significant decline from the 38 percent poverty rate in 2005, before Morales ws elected. The projects announced by the Bolivian leader would also reduce income inequality from 39 times in 2014 to 25 in 2020.

Moderate poverty meanwhile is expected to drop to 24 percent in the next five years.

The development program also includes plans to build 51,290 new homes to ensure a “dignified life” for all Bolivians.

Bolivia will further invest US$86.3 million in enhancing and expanding education in technological innovation by building at least 75 higher technical institutes to train Bolivian students.

INTERVIEW: Bolivia: A Country That Dared to Exist

The landlocked South American country has been hailed by the U.N. for its expansive poverty-alleviation programs, which has made it the most successful nation in closing the inequality gap in Latin America in 2014. The government of President Morales has been pursuing a number of large-scale projects aimed at industrializing the country’s natural resources in order to generate greater national wealth that it says will play a central role in the ongoing fight to combat extreme poverty in Bolivia.

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