+ ↺ − 16 pxBolivian President Rodrigo Paz is seeking to open up the economy through a new Investment Law expected to be presented to Congress on Tuesday, alongside measures to reduce state control over the energy and mining sectors. Paz also hopes to secure a $1.9 billion IMF loan program over three years, which could unlock billions of dollars of additional multilateral funds, World Politics Review reported. Bolivia’s GDP is expected to contract by more than 3 percent this year, but that is just one of several problems facing Paz. His initiatives face an uphill climb in a fractured Congress, and he has already weathered two rounds of protests over his economic policies in just nine months since taking office. As James Bosworth put it in a WPR column in May, “The president who came to power hoping to fix the economic crisis he inherited must now escape the political crisis his reforms have helped to create.”