We have specialized on Bolivia’s low taxes and some generally history. What the history has done for Bolivia of today. We also mention Bolivia’s economic state. We have interviewed three students from Bolivia because right now there are ten Bolivians here to visit the Social Science Class. The names of the students are Leonardo de la Torre A´vila, Sonia Uniona Toma and Alejandra Estrada Guzmás from Cochabamba in Bolivia. Bolivia Bolivia is a country on the west side of South America. Bolivia has 8,3 million inhabitants. Even though it has big natural resources it is one of the most poor countries on the continent of America, hard weighed down with debts and dependent of assistance. Bolivia’s economy is built on the raw material export. 70% of the population live in poverty. It is a big difference between poor and rich people in Bolivia. Even though the big poverty’s high-technological farms and oil-and gas industry has developed. When the tin market broke down in 1985 and the oil price sank, Bolivia’s economy met with a difficult depression. The inflation became bigger and the national dept grew bigger. The inflation sank between 1993-1997 and the value stabilised. The inflation has since 1993 dropped step by step. Bolivia’s population pays very little in taxes just about 9-11% compared to us in Sweden who pay about 28-35%. A big piece of Bolivia’s economic situation is the illegal export of kokaproducts, but the most important products are minerals, natural gas, soybeans, coffee and wood. The most important export countries are the Argentine, the USA, Great Britain and Peru. Bolivia’s import products are raw material, transport equipment and consumption goods, the countries they import most products from are the USA, Brazil, Japan and the Argentine. Interview with three Bolivians
We sat around a table in one of the schools classroom. Leonardo started the interview with saying to us;
So there is a poor class who has been poor for a long time. Even today the rich ones don’t help the poor people. The poor people have to help themselves, said Leo. Now we have a lot of social problems, like some groups are involved in fights with other groups. They want to stand up for the poor people, but now we don’t have resources to solve it, so we have a lot of strikes and fights. After the last election when the president was elected the native Indians became very frustrated. Both the government and the parliament are very divided, so they have problems to co-operate with each other because they have different opinions about things. That makes it hard to come up with any solutions to the poverty , said Sonia and Alejandra. Why are the taxes so low? - In Bolivia we have three different taxes, transaction tax, income tax and import tax. They are all very low. The people earn so little money a month so if we should pay high taxes as you in Sweden we could probably not afford to support our families. In the beginning of year 2003 the government tried to raise the taxes, but that resulted in a big strike. It was a small war between the police and the military, because they were afraid that the police should attack the president’s palace. There was no police force all over the country so the people started to rob stores. This situation shows that the tax line is to weak, it seems to be easy to raise it but it is not. Because the poor are not able to pay, said Leo. Why is it only people who are permanently employed who pay taxes? - Bolivia’s economy is like a ghost business. In our country you are either permanently employed or for example just a farmer. There is no middle thing. It is only the permanently employed who have enough money to pay taxes. What is included in your contributions if you pay taxes? - That is a hard question, Leo said. The basic is that every Bolivian has the right to go to the public education system, for five years all free. You also have the right to treatment during your pregnancy and the first six months in your life you have free health care if something happens. Only commonly infections not if you get burned or have cancer or something like that, because the treatment is too expensive. During the first five years of your life you have a sort of insurance that covers small things. There we have a problem, because 80% of our population are poor so the people die because they can’t afford medical care. If you work for the government you have a kind of insurance that pays for the dentist and the health care, they said. Is that why there are so high death percentage of babies in your country? - Yes, one of the largest reason is a disease called EDA. It is a type of diary disease the children often gets. Just as Leo said before, there are many people who can’t afford to pay their own health care. High taxes can’t solve Bolivia’s economic problems. It’s not enough to raise the taxes to get a better economic situation, first you have to try to fix permanent employment for everybody because it’s only those who can afford to pay taxes. It doesn’t solve all problems but it’s a good start.
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