2024-08-06 05:00:42
Such figures are given by Žygymantas Mauricas, economist of Luminor bank.
He explained in a post on Facebook that Venezuela’s poverty was caused by the left-wing economic policies of President Nicolas Maduro, who has ruled the country since 2013, and his predecessor Hugo Chavez (2002-2013), which were characterized by nationalization of companies, weak protection of private property, and large redistribution through the budget. (high taxes and huge state benefits), but also price, trade and business controls and entrenched corruption.
“Such an economic policy led to one of the biggest and longest economic recessions in the world, and Venezuela, which could have become the Dubai of South America due to its abundant oil resources, became a ruined state,” wrote Ž.Mauricas.
After the elections, there are protests in the streets
On the evening of July 29, the Central Electoral Commission of Venezuela announced N. Maduro as the winner of the presidential election. The National Electoral Council, controlled by Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, said the current president won 51.2 percent of the vote. votes, and the candidate of the united opposition Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia – 44 percent. of votes.
According to independent surveys, about 65 percent voted for the latter. of voters, and for N. Maduro, whose thousands of opponents came out to protest in the streets of Caracas and other cities of the country, from 14 to 31 percent. Clashes between the protesters and the police and the army are inevitable.
Maduro has rejected allegations of election fraud and, without bothering to prove it, has said the protests against his re-election were an attempt by “fascist and counter-revolutionary forces” to carry out a coup initiated by foreign powers.
Before and after 2018 the protests of the presidential elections in Venezuela lasted for several months, but N. Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela remained in power.
It seems that this time also in 2013. the former bus driver and union activist turned president has no intention of relinquishing power.
Many accuse N. Maduro of authoritarianism and even consider him an illegitimate leader, but it cannot be denied that significant changes took place in the country during his presidency, which fundamentally changed Venezuelan society.
Angel Bermudez, correspondent for BBC Mundo, the Spanish-language service of the British public broadcaster, has selected the four most important of them.
The biggest wave of migration in Latin America’s recent history
During N. Maduro’s rule, Venezuela experienced the biggest wave of migration in the modern history of Latin America.
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for Refugees, 7.7 million Venezuelans live outside the country. This is more than 22 percent. from 34 million population counted by the Venezuelan authorities during the last population census in 2011.
With these numbers, Venezuela surpasses the migration waves of Syria (5 million) and Ukraine (6.5 million), two countries that have been plagued by war for several years.
The mass exodus of Venezuelans is in stark contrast to the country’s history, which has welcomed migrants for decades since the start of the oil boom a century ago.
Experts agree that the mass emigration of Venezuelans is due to the severe economic crisis the country has been facing (Venezuela has long had the world’s highest hyperinflation), as well as the constant shortage of food, medicine and other basic goods.
N. Maduro has for many years linked the cause of this economic crisis and wave of migration to the sanctions imposed on his government by the United States of America and other countries.
But the oil sanctions that really affected Venezuela were imposed by the US in 2019, and the economic crisis and wave of migration occurred a few years earlier.
In addition, statistics from the UN Population Fund show that Venezuela’s population was already declining in 2017.
The first Latin American country to be investigated by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity
in 2021 November 3 International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has announced the opening of a formal investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in the suppression of demonstrations in Venezuela in 2017. political crisis.
Thus, Venezuela became the first Latin American country and one of the few countries in the world where the ICC opened an official investigation.
N. Maduro then said that he respects the ICC prosecutor’s decision, but does not agree with it, and challenged it. However, in March of this year, the Court of Appeal rejected the Venezuelan government’s arguments and confirmed that the process continues.
in 2020 The ICC prosecutor said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that Venezuelan officials and the military in 2017 carried out extrajudicial executions, forced abductions, arbitrary detentions and torture against anti-government protesters.
In addition, from 2019 An independent international mission of the UN Human Rights Council has been investigating since 2014. Extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment have been committed in Venezuela.
In addition to alleged abuses in the crackdown on protesters, Maduro’s government has been accused of using the judicial system against its opponents. According to the non-governmental organization Foro Penal, there were 301 political prisoners in Venezuela in mid-July.
Among other things, according to Foro Penal, at least six opponents of N. Maduro’s regime had to leave the country. Such a condition is imposed upon release. In practice, this amounts to a penalty of deportation prohibited under international law. Venezuelan authorities deny this and claim that these people themselves asked to be allowed to leave.
Maduro’s government has repeatedly denied all allegations of human rights abuses and insisted that arrests and trials initiated by security forces or judicial authorities are conducted in accordance with the law.
A new economic model to fight the world’s biggest inflation
in 2013 Venezuela’s economy has entered a staggering recession, which will lead to lost 75 percent gross domestic product.
Although the deepening of the economic crisis coincided with N. Maduro’s coming to power, some of its causes were related to the policies of his predecessor and mentor H. Chavez.
The now deceased president in 2003. began to apply a strict system of currency and price controls. Since 2006 he began a policy of expropriation which, according to the estimates of the industry organization Conindustria, affected about 1,440 companies.
During the period of H. Chavez’s rule, many of the effects of this policy did not manifest themselves – it was helped by high oil prices and the policy of unrestrained borrowing to support the budget (between 2007 and 2018, Venezuela’s foreign debt increased by 2.5 times and reached a record amount of 156 billion dollars).
Since 2014 as oil prices fell, Maduro resorted to additional borrowing and the use of international reserves to try to preserve Chavez’s economic model, but the situation only got worse.
in 2015 180 percent was recorded in Venezuela. inflation, the highest in the world at the time. in 2017 the country began a cycle of hyperinflation, which reached its peak in 2018, when, according to the Central Bank of Venezuela, inflation was 130,000 percent.
In the same year, the shortage of medicines, food and other essential goods worsened. The poverty level in the country increased from 48% in 2014 to 91%. in 2018
It was then, starting in 2018, that Maduro’s government began a quiet process of economic reforms, virtually suspending currency and price controls, removing subsidies for gasoline that used to be the cheapest in the world, allowing the de facto dollarization of the economy, and even opening a dialogue with the private sector that some expropriated companies would be returned to their former owners.
Until 2021 As of December, the country overcame hyperinflation and to some extent resolved its deficit problems, at least for those Venezuelans who receive income in foreign currency and can therefore afford to buy products at high prices.
For the crisis in the country, N. Maduro blamed the alleged “economic war” that the opposition and the United States are allegedly waging against his government, as well as the international sanctions imposed on Venezuela in recent years.
Historic decline in oil production
According to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), in 1998, when H. Chavez won the presidential elections, 3.1 million barrels were produced in Venezuela. barrels of oil per day.
When in 2013 H. Chavez died in March, oil production in Venezuela decreased to 2.3 million. barrels per day, ie 25 percent.
Venezuela’s oil production continued to decline during N. Maduro’s rule. in 2020 in June it decreased to 336 thousand. barrels per day, that is, to a level close to the 20th century. the beginning of the forties.
This decrease is associated with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic that hit the entire world economy and the US government’s 2019 sanctions introduced in January.
The Venezuelan government has blamed these sanctions, which restrict the extraction and export of oil, Venezuela’s main source of income, as the cause of the country’s economic problems.
According to OPEC, production actually fell from 1.1 million bpd after the sanctions were imposed. barrels per day in 2019 in January to 740 thousand barrels per day in March.
However, these data do not reflect the whole picture, as Venezuela’s oil production fell by half during the period of N. Maduro’s rule, even before the introduction of sanctions, from 2.3 million barrels. barrels per day in 2013 in March to 1.1 million barrels per day in 2018 December.
Until April of this year, Venezuela extracted 878 thousand. barrels per day. For a country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world (more than 300 billion barrels), this is very little.
2024-08-06 05:00:42