Tin Quotes
Previous governments had attempted to privatize the economy and sold off many of the nationally owned enterprises. Morales, a socialist, began reversing the cycle and “nationalized” the natural gas supply which is plentiful. Bolivia had been getting a very small percentage compared with world standards and Morales renegotiated the percentage for the government, but left the management in private hands. So in that sense he did not “nationalize” the hydrocarbons. The Bolivian mines represented another problem entirely. For years, featherbedding had created tens of thousands of unnecessary jobs for the mining, nut necessary to the people who were employed and the economy. But private operators always wanted to reduce the number of workers to only what was needed. So the nationalization problem was to increase the productivity of the Bolivian mines, maintain the exports of the mined products and maintain the employment---a difficult balancing act.
