sursa: Reuters

Salim Lamrani, tradus în in CriticAtac, (textul de mai jos este prescurtat), 13 martie 2013 (data textului în limba română):

15. Din 1999 în 2011, rata sărăciei a scăzut de la 42,8% la 26,5%, iar a sărăciei extreme – de la 16,6% la 7%.

16. Potrivit clasamentului IDU (Indicele de Dezvoltare Umană al PNUD), Venezuela a trecut de la locul 83 în 2000 (0,656) la locul 73 (0,735) în 2011, integrându-se astfel în categoria ţărilor cu IDU ridicat.

17. Coeficientul Gini, care permite calcularea inegalităţilor într-o ţară, a trecut de la 0,46 în 1999 la 0,39 în 2011.

19. Rata malnutriţiei infantile a fost redusă cu aproape 40% din 1999.

20. În 1999, 82% din populaţie avea acces la apă potabilă; astăzi – 95%.

21. În timpul preşedinţiei lui Chávez, cheltuielile sociale au crescut cu 60,6%.

22. Înainte de 1999, doar 387.000 de persoane primeau pensie de vârstă; astăzi, beneficiază 2,1 milioane de persoane.

23. După 1999, au fost construite în Venezuela 700.000 de locuinţe.

25. Reforma agrară a permis ca zeci de mii de agricultori să îşi stăpânească pământul; în total, au fost distribuite mai mult de 3 milioane de hectare de pământ.

27. După 1999, rata caloriilor consumate de către venezueleni a crescut cu 50%, graţie Misiunii Alimentare care a creat o reţea de distribuţie a produselor alimentare de 22.000 de magazine (MERCAL, Casas de Alimentación, Red PDVAL), unde produsele sunt subvenţionate cu 30% din preţ. Consumul de carne a crescut cu 75% după 1999.

29. Rata malnutriţiei a scăzut de la 21% în 1998 la mai puţin de 3% în 2012.

30. Potrivit FAO, Venezuela este ţara din America Latină şi Caraibe cea mai avansată în eradicarea foamei.

31. Naţionalizarea întreprinderii petroliere PDVSA în 2003 i-a permis Venezuelei să-şi recâştige suveranitatea energetică.

32. Naţionalizarea sectoarelor electrice şi de telecomunicaţii (CANTV şi Electricidad de Caracas) a permis să se pună capăt situaţiilor de monopol şi să se universalizeze accesul la servicii.

33. După 1999, au fost create mai mult de 50.000 de cooperative în toate sectoarele economiei.

34. Rata şomajului a scăzut de la 15,2% în 1998 la 6,4% în 2012, creându-se mai mult de 4 milioane de locuri de muncă.

35. Salariul minim a crescut de la 100 de bolivari (16 dolari) în 1999 la 2.047,52 bolivari (330 dolari) în 2012, deci o creştere mai mare de 2000%. Este salariul minim cel mai ridicat din America Latină.

36. În 1999, 65% din populaţia activă avea salariu minim; în 2012, doar 21,1% dintre salariaţi mai au acest nivel de salarizare.

37. Adulţii de o anumită vârstă care nu au lucrat niciodată dispun de un venit de protecţie: 60% din salariul minim.

38. Femeile singure şi persoanele handicapate primesc o alocaţie echivalentă cu 80% din salariul minim.

39. Timpul de muncă este acum de 6 ore pe zi (36 de ore pe săptămână), fără diminuarea salariului.

43. Potrivit raportului anual World Happiness, 2012, Venezuela este a doua cea mai fericită ţară din America Latină, după Costa Rica, şi a 19-a la nivel mondial, înaintea Germaniei şi Spaniei.

45. Pentru prima dată în istoria sa, Venezuela dispune de propriii săi sateliţi (Bolívar şi Miranda) şi este deja suverană în domeniul tehnologiei spaţiale. Internetul şi telecomunicaţiile sunt disponibile pe întregul său teritoriu.

Martin Marinos, preluat în CriticAtac, 26 feb 2014:

Almost a year has passed since the death of Hugo Chávez on March 5, 2013.[…]
Venezuela has seen some shortages and a high rate of inflation (56% for 2013). The opposition blames the government’s price and currency controls for these problems. […] However, the government blames the shortages and high prices on speculation and hoarding aimed at sabotaging the state. Thus in November, 2013, after president Maduro received special powers from the national assembly to rule by decree, he went on the offensive and ordered shops around the country to cut their prices by more than a half. He also extended the list of goods under price control.

Of course, Maduro did not wait for the “parasitic bourgeois managers,” as he calls them, to follow the new law and sent in the National Guard to enforce it. The action resulted in uncovering large quantities of stockpiled goods and it brought prices down. Long queues formed in front of stores as people rushed in to purchase significantly discounted white goods, such as laundry machines, television sets and stoves.

This action demonstrated that Maduro is not afraid to confront capital and the opposition and people on the left saw him as a capable and strong leader. […]

[T]he elections […] showed that beneath the candidates and the personalities, there are organized bodies that drive the revolutionary process, or “el proceso” as it is widely referred to in Venezuela. It showed that beyond the media personalities, whether Chávez or Maduro, there is a constellation of grassroots formations, such as communal councils, communes, communal media, cooperatives and occupied factories that can mobilize the revolution’s electoral victories from below. This is not to say that the role of the state or the leader are miniscule. Far from it. But what is clear is that underneath the traditional media narratives there exists a complex set of relationships that reinforces the Bolivarian Revolution even under a new leadership and during the deep crisis produced by Chávez’s physical absence. […]

The prejudiced treatment of Venezuelan politics in western media is also evident in the fact that virtually every piece of news mentions violence, shortages of basic goods and inflation as an explanation for the unrest in Venezuela. Indeed, these are not unimportant issues, but why not unemployment, or poverty levels, or access to healthcare and education? Very few media outlets mention that in thirteen years (from 1999-2012) the Venezuelan government reduced poverty from 42.8 percent of the households to 26.7 percent, in another words, a 37.6 percent decline in the poverty rate. Extreme poverty declined even more, from 16.6 percent to 7.0 from 1999 to 2011 – a 57.8 percent decline.[xiii] And this is only one achievement of the revolution out of many which are deliberately ignored by the vast majority of western media. Instead, media as diverse as the Guardian and FoxNews seem to believe that Venezuela exists only when the right is protesting.

The Economist, 25 iunie 2015

Matt O’Brien, în Wahsington Post, 5 august 2015

Venezuela is running out of food, running out of beer, and running out of dollars. In other words, it’s not going bankrupt gradually anymore. It’s going bankrupt much more suddenly.[…]

Now, mor e than anywhere else, socialism should have worked in Venezuela. After all, it has the world’s largest oil reserves, so it should have had more than enough petrodollars to finance a generous safety net. But rather than creating a Norwegian-style state, Venezuela has opted for a more Soviet one. It started when the late Hugo Chavez turned the country’s state-owned oil company from being largely autonomous to being little more than his personal piggy bank. Profits came out, but new investment didn’t go in, and, as a result, oil production fell 25 percent between 1999 and 2o13. Oil exports plunged twice as much, because so much of the country’s crude stays home at the extremely subsidized price of 1.5 U.S. cents per gallon.

But Venezuela’s government didn’t want to just control the petrodollars. It wanted to control all the dollars. That would give it the power to tell businesses that need dollars to, well, stay in business what kind of prices, profits, and production they could offer. So, to that end, the regime has set up a three-tiered exchange rate that let companies and cronies—is there a difference?—get a hold of dollars for what is now 100 times less than the black market rate, which they are then supposed to use to buy imports with.

But now Venezuela is facing a new shortage. Oil is back down to around $50-a-barrel, which means the government barely has enough dollars to pay back what it owes, let alone dole them out to companies. So it’s had to print more money than usual—which was already a lot—to try to paper over this problem. The result, as you can see below, has been a complete collapse in Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar. Going by the black market rate, which is the closest there is to an actual one, the bolivar has plummeted from 79 per dollar last August to 687 today. That’s an 89 percent drop in the last year, with 40 percent of that coming in the last two months alone.

Andrei Tiut