The world’s wealthiest man, who has invested more than a billion dollars in the United Kingdom, offered the stark warning a day after some polls suggested the Leave campaign had edged ahead.
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The Bolivian government rejected an offer by US tycoon Bill Gates, who said he would donate 100,000 chickens to reduce poverty in developing countries.
The Bolivian government turned down a donation of hens from Bill Gates, citing its already-successful poultry industry, Reuters reports.
“I find it rude, because unfortunately some people, especially in the empire [the United States], still see us as beggars”.
Gates introduced his chicken-distribution idea in a blog post, explaining that chickens are a renewable source of protein useful to people in extreme poverty.
“[Gates should] inform himself that us Bolivians have a lot of production and do not need any gifted chicks in order to live, we have dignity”, Cocarico told assembled journalists in Bolivia’s capital of La Paz.
“He does not know Bolivia’s reality to think we are living 500 years ago, in the middle of the jungle not knowing how to produce”, said César Cocarico, Bolivia’s minister of land and rural development, according to the Financial Times.
The plan is a joint initiative between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the charity Heifer International. Bolivia’s pride is justified: the country’s economy has almost tripled in size over the last decade, with its GDP per capita jumping from $1,200 in 2006 to $3,119 in 2015.
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The country’s economy is also considered to be one of the strongest on the South American continent, according to the International Monetary Fund.
