Rafael Correa, Date of Birth, Place of Birth
TweetRafael Correa
President of Ecuador
Date of Birth: 06-Apr-1963
Place of Birth: Guayaquil, Guayas Province, Ecuador
Profession: politician, economist
Nationality: Ecuador
Zodiac Sign: Aries 
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About Rafael Correa
- Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado (Spanish pronunciation: [rafa'el ßi'sente ko're.a ðel'?aðo]; born 6 April 1963) is an Ecuadorian politician and economist who served as President of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017.
- The leader of the PAIS Alliance political movement from its foundation until 2017, Correa is a democratic socialist and his administration focused on the implementation of left-wing policies.
- Internationally, he served as president pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations. Born to a lower middle-class mestizo family in Guayaquil, Correa studied economics at the Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil, the University of Louvain (UCLouvain), and the University of Illinois, where he received his PhD.
- Returning to Ecuador, in 2005 he became the Minister for the Economy under President Alfredo Palacio, successfully lobbying Congress for increased spending on health and education projects. Correa won the presidency in the 2006 general election on a platform criticizing the established political elites.
- Taking office in January 2007, he sought to move away from Ecuador's neoliberal economic model by reducing the influence of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
- He declared Ecuador's national debt illegitimate and announced that the country would default on over $3 billion worth of bonds; he pledged to fight creditors in international courts and succeeded in reducing the price of outstanding bonds by more than 60%.
- He oversaw the introduction of a new constitution, being re-elected in 2009 and again 2013 general election. Correa's presidency was part of the Latin American pink tide, a turn toward leftist governments in the region, allying himself with Hugo Chávez's Venezuela and brought Ecuador into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas in June 2009.
- Using its own form of 21st century socialism, Correa's administration increased government spending, reducing poverty, raising the minimum wage and increasing the standard of living in Ecuador.
- By the end of Correa's tenure, reliance on oil, public expenditures, 2016 earthquakes (more than 650 deaths and damage estimated at the equivalent of about 3% of GDP), and international pressure caused Ecuador's economy to enter a recession, resulting in government spending being slashed.Between 2006 and 2016, poverty decreased from 36.7% to 22.5% and annual per capita GDP growth was 1.5 percent (as compared to 0.6 percent over the prior two decades).
- At the same time, inequalities, as measured by the Gini index, decreased from 0.55 to 0.47.On 3 July 2018, a judge in Ecuador ordered the arrest of Correa after he failed to appear in court during a trial surrounding the kidnapping of a political opponent.
- Correa, who lived in Belgium at the time, denied the allegations regarding the kidnapping.
- In July 2018 Interpol rejected an Ecuador-issued arrest warrant and called it "obviously a political matter."
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