The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are co-operating "unconditionally" with Bolivia's government after months of frosty relations, President Evo Morales said on Thursday.
Morales, whose government nationalised Bolivia's energy industry last year, told reporters on a visit to Switzerland's financial capital that he had made it clear to the international financial institutions that they had to back his policies.
"I have said that if they want to collaborate they must support the projects and the programmes of the Bolivian government," said Morales. "Our relations (with the IMF and World Bank) were frozen but at the end of last year they presented themselves," said Morales, who since taking office 18 months ago has curbed unfettered free market reforms pushed through in the 1980s.
"They are co-operating unconditionally," said Morales. Morales said Bolivian governments had in the past followed advice from the IMF to the letter, adding that they had sometimes paid a high price as a result. "For example in 2003 the World Bank and the IMF said there should either be a sharp tax hike or an increase in gasoline prices in order to deal with Bolivia's fiscal deficit," he said.
"The government accepted the tax hike and within two days the Bolivian armed forces were involved in confrontations in which 13 people died. Who brought about these deaths? The Fund and the (World) Bank," said Morales. "We will not accept any impositions," he said.
Morales was in Zurich to meet FIFA president Sepp Blatter whom he persuaded to reconsider a ban on high altitude soccer matches which threatened to outlaw world cup qualifying matches in Bolivia's capital of La Paz.
Morales had harsh words for his political enemies at home, saying that the country's traditional moneyed elite - who are mostly of European descent - resented being governed by an indigenous Indian.
"They don't accept in Bolivia that a so-called Indian governs and governs well. This bothers them," he said. "Some sectors only think of harming Bolivia by harming Morales and his government. They are few but they have a lot of money." Earlier in a speech to a gathering of Bolivian immigrants living in Switzerland, Morales said the nationalisation of the oil and gas industry and a more austere style of government had helped Bolvia deliver its first fiscal surplus in decades. The country's currency reserves had risen to $3.7 billion from $1.4 billion in 18 months, while the economy was expanding.
"If we reach a 6 percent growth rate this year we will be among the five fastest-growing countries in Latin America," he said. Bolivia, South America's poorest country, has the region's second-largest natural gas reserves after Venezuela.
But despite strong growth, which has been boosted by high oil and gas prices, investment was lagging. "We have economic growth, an increase in international reserves and macroeconomic stability but investment is still not good enough," he said.
He later told Reuters he hoped a tour of the Middle East and Europe planned for August would help drum up investment and "alliances with state companies." Turning to Bolivia's public health problems, Morales said nearly 100,000 Bolivians had received eye operations with the help of Cuban medical teams since he took office.
Despite his friendship with Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader had never tried to convert Morales to communism, said Morales. "Fidel never talked to me about communism. I spent time with him before becoming president and he always talked to me about health and education and more recently about the environment."