After the great successes of the First Five Year Plan, in which Bolivia remained alive, defeated imperialism, and finally discovered the route to food self-sufficiency, Bolivia's Bureau of Economic Planning, now led by Hernán Terrazas Céspedes, with Director Saur now taking a well-deserved retirement after a life of planning first the Nazi and then Bolivian war economies.

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While Bolivia is no longer on the brink of famine, hundreds of hectares of new rice paddies have been built in the lowlands, and the great dam on the Bala river has been completed, Bolivia has barely managed to rebuild from the American imperialist campaign against it. The Second Five Year Plan will see Bolivia become a model for all the Americas of how, under Bolivarianism, an economy can grow far faster, and with far greater benefit to the worker, than under the capitalist mode of production seen in the rest of the Americas, barring perhaps a few exceptions in the new revolutionary states of Central America. Top priorities of the Second Five Year Plan include:

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Expansion of the Bolivian Labor Supply

While attempts were made to increase the Bolivian birth-rate, these have been largely cancelled out by the American bombing and invasion campaign, along with the short famine induced by American coercion of Bolivia's neighboring states. Expansion of the labor supply in the Second Five Year Plan will focus on, first, eliminating the need for traditional agricultural labor through comprehensive mechanization of the new lowland state farms, and second, obtaining foreign workers from fellow revolutionary regimes. The 12,000 Chinese laborers currently working on improving the rice-fields of Bolivia are a good start, but far more are needed to make the Bolivian revolutionary state viable.

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Consolidation of Heavy Industry And Refining

Bolivia's heavy industry is currently negligible, and investment of the state in capital is desperately required. In particular, Bolivia's vast quantities of valuable ores are practically all exported in their raw form, rather than in a refined state, meaning that much of the value of these ores is captured by third parties. Bolivian state investment will focus on establishing smelting and related secondary industries.

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Acquisition of Hydrocarbons

Bolivia's lack of coal is a major impediment to its dreams of heavy industry and refining, as currently any coal must be imported from faraway Colombia. As a result, Bolivian geologists, and those of our partners, will be conducting extensive surveys exploring potential oil and natural gas deposits. The latter in particular is of interest, because while natural gas has negligible value as an export product, emerging technology--and basic chemistry--suggest that it can largely, if not entirely, replace coal in smelting processes.

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Increased Focus On Education

While literacy has improved significantly in Bolivia since the Revolution, higher education has not seen significant investment. As newly literate children begin to reach university age, Bolivia will have to expand access to university education to ensure that enough technical experts are available to service Bolivian needs, as the odds of attracting meaningful numbers of them from abroad are low, to say the least.

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