By the early 1990s, Nicaragua had become one of the most highly indebted and economically unstable countries in the world. Half of the population was living in poverty with one-fifth in extreme poverty. In the five years to 2006, economic growth has been consistently around 4 percent per year, and external debt as a share of GDP has fallen steeply. The roots of this turnaround reach back to the early 1990s when the country began reinventing itself under a government that restored a market-based economy.