The article on the country’s economic reality states that: “As José Mujica’s five-year presidential term comes to a close, Uruguay has become a bastion of pragmatic economic policies that favor business and foreign investment”.
“Not what you would have imagined from a former guerrilla fighter with socialist leanings”. This is the beginning of an article released in the US magazine Fortune which highlights the economic growth of Uruguay, investments such as Montes del Plata and the reduction of poverty.
“I believe we have to favor capitalism, so that its wheels keep turning” and “then take our quota of resources to give to the weakest. But we should not paralyze it”, Mujica told the magazine.
Besides providing details on his actions as a guerrilla fighter in the 60s, Fortune says that he still believes in unarmed revolutions, but he was willing to conform to the checks and balances of democracy because they did not obstruct him from effecting some change as president.
“We’re very used in this world to seeing economy and inequality grow together”, said Mujica. “In Uruguay, that has not happened. The economy grew and people were lifted out of poverty”, he added.
Mujica points out that his government has opted for a middle ground, favoring private sector projects to spur economic growth and modest interventions to distribute wealth. “The numbers speak for themselves”, says Oya Celasun, the mission chief in Uruguay for the International Monetary Fund.
“Mujica decided not to recreate the divisions of the past”, says Jimena Blanco, who monitors the Southern Cone countries for Verisk Maplecroft, a risk analysis firm in London.
Source: El País
