Chile seeks to eliminate extreme poverty by 2020

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said Friday that extreme poverty in the country should be wiped out by 2020.

Chileans should prepare themselves to live in a developed country without poverty, Pinera said on his Twitter account.

"This is a moral imperative, nothing and nobody will impede us from reaching this great and ambitious goal," Pinera said.

"Having 500,000 Chileans living in extreme poverty and 2.6 million in poverty injures the soul and the heart of our nation," he said.

However, Pinera did not say how this goal would be achieved.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the poverty rate in Chile is 18.9 percent, while the average figure for OECD member countries is 10 percent.

In South America, Chile is the country with the most uneven income distribution and the third highest poverty rate, the OECD said.

Andres Solimano, director of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), said that in order to eliminate poverty, the problems of Chile's economic structure should be solved first.

Source: Xinhua

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