Bolivia’s embattled president says will take a 50 percent salary cut

Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz says he will cut his salary and those of his cabinet ministers in half amid a growing political crisis marked by protests and roadblocks demanding his resignation.

Speaking at an event in Sucre, the country’s constitutional capital, on Monday, Paz said the pay cuts demonstrated the government’s “commitment to the country”.

The cuts come as Bolivia enters its fourth week of political and social unrest. Protests have caused growing supply-chain issues in the cities of La Paz and El Alto, where severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine are hitting markets, hospitals and petrol stations.

Protesters are pressing Paz’s centrist government to roll back austerity measures and address rising living costs, with demands ranging from increasing wages and restoring a fuel subsidy that had kept prices at 2006 levels. The protests come amid concerns that the president is aligned with big business and elites, and ruling in favour of them – especially as he did not appoint any Indigenous or working-class people to his cabinet, a contrast from the past.

Paz, who took office in November and inherited an economy in turmoil, has defended spending cuts and fuel subsidy reductions as necessary to stabilise public finances.