"Many of the 1.5 million new voters who backed Morales had abandoned rightwing positions, at least partly because the economic results achieved over the last four years have been so much more outstanding than anything accomplished by the rightwing administrations that have governed since 1985...Despite the global crisis, Bolivia boasted one of the highest growth rates in Latin America in 2009, with GDP growth of three percent, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and 2.8 percent according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which praised the Morales administration's balanced management of public finances. According to a study by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a Washington-based think tank, Bolivia’s economic growth in the last four years has been higher than at any time in the last three decades, averaging 5.2 percent a year since Morales took office in January 2006. The report also points to Morales' reversal of the privatisation of the country's natural gas reserves...Bolivia's foreign reserves climbed from less than two billion dollars in 2005 to more than eight billion in 2008..Savings [one of the premire signs of economic growth] increased by 581 million dollars in the first half of 2009, 10.2 percent more than in the first six months of 2008, with deposits rising to nearly 6.3 billion dollars, the private banking association, Asoban, reported. " -- Franz Chávez, Bolivia: Evo Morales, the Best Ally of the Middle Class, 1/8/2009