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by Juan Limachi
LIMA, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Peruvians from various walks of life have felt new winds blowing through the country thanks to the economic and social reforms carried out by President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who has been in power a little under five months.
This week, one well-received measure was that healthcare and education workers will get a substantial pay raise to improve their quality of life.
For example, 90,000 teachers will see their salaries rise from 459 U.S. dollars a month to 502 dollars, and 45,000 doctors will see theirs increase from 907 U.S. dollars a month to 1,351 dollars.
Earlier this week, Kuczynski also got a standing ovation at the Annual Executives Conference (CADE 2016), where the country's business community expressed their support for his policies, such as the fiscal reform and the red tape reduction.
During his speech at the conference, the president reiterated that his government was working for the prosperity of the Peruvian economy as well as for social justice.
"We want a buoyant market economy with social justice," he told the gathered executives who expressed their support for his crackdown on corruption.
Since Kuczynski came to office in July, the government has also experienced his firm hand, as he immediately dismissed collaborators involved in corruption, which has been well received by the population.
Former Presidential Advisor Carlos Moreno was dismissed for having allegedly carried out suspicious business transactions in the health sector, and former Defense Minister Mariano Gonzalez was fired after he was found having placed his girlfriend in a highly-paid position in the ministry.
Kuczynski has also sought to curb the rampant informal economy -- which is neither taxed, nor monitored by any form of government -- in Peru by helping to formalize micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
His vision of a Peruvian society with higher levels of social inclusion and less economic disparity has led his government to attend with priority to inhabitants of the southern Andes, one of the poorest and remote regions in the country.
Many of Peru's 7 million poor people live there and the government has focused on job creation.
According to the national statistics office INEI, 73.2 percent of Peru's 15.9 million working people have an informal job, leading Kuczynski to see this as an emergency.
While this creates a tough task for the 78-year-old economist to face, the president has vowed to put Peru on a track of sustainable development by taking socio-economic measures.
For this year, the government has set a target for the economy to grow by 4 percent and for private investment to top 17.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
To achieve this, Promperu, the country's export and tourism bureau, has designed a portfolio of investment projects worth over 15 billion U.S. dollars.
