MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Sharing economic expansion with all the population

The difference between Chile and the rest of Latinamerican countries is that Chile used economic growth to improve social development indexes, said former Socialist president Ricardo Lagos in an international bankers meeting in Zurich.

"In the nineties, many Latinamerican countries experienced strong growth but not development", said Lagos addressing the closing session of the International Finance Institute with 400 delegates from 340 different banks.

"One thing is serious macroeconomic policies, fiscal and monetary, but when countries' economies expand it's important to ensure that a share of that growth effectively is invested in social policies that reach all", underlined Mr. Lagos.

"One of the main defects we have in Latinamerica is that we lack coherent public policies which allow us to make sure the benefits of expansion reach the whole population", he added.

However Mr. Lagos pointed out that Chile is ahead of other countries in the region regarding government policies since "growth without policies that benefit the majority generates the feeling that it's benefiting the same minorities over and over. And this leads to certain responses such as can be appreciated in some places".

"There are no shortcuts for the benefits of growth to reach the majority. You have to work and work hard", underlined Mr. Lagos who said he was confident his successor in the job president Michelle Bachelet would continue along the same line.

"I'm convinced she will have greater degrees of liberty than those I enjoyed to make effective those public inclusion policies. When I reached office there was great suspicion about what this "pinkish" or "reddish" character was going to do", Mr. Lagos said with a touch of humour.