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The severity of the Venezuelan crisis, revealed by the Government years later
Caracas, Jan 16 (EFE).- Nearly 10 million people went hungry in Venezuela in 2017, one of the worst years of the economic crisis, whose official indicators are mostly unknown, except for some recently revealed by the Government in its attempt to show improvements in the situation, without making it clear how deep the damage from a seven-year recession ripped. The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, announced this month, by way of victory, that the nutritional deficit has been reduced to 7.7% -as it closed in 2022-, an encouraging figure if compared to 2017, when 35.6 % (about 10 million people) suffered from a lack of nutrients or, in other words, they were malnourished. This problem, according to Maduro, has been “one of the most lacerating and painful wounds” of the crisis, but it is not the only or the worst, if one trusts the alarms published by humanitarian organizations, which have reported the extreme poverty in which he lived and, to a lesser extent, the majority of the population still lives. During the annual accountability, presented last Thursday before Parliament, the president broke the silence that characterizes his Government and spoke about the economy and food by presenting indicators that he compared with previous years to demonstrate the improvement achieved, which revealed the severity of the crisis with extemporaneous but unpublished data. HOW DOES THE ECONOMY GROW? The Venezuelan economy grew 15% in 2022, the “biggest” rise in Latin America, according to data presented by Maduro that only talks about the last six quarters – all positive – without any reference to the period between April 2019 and June 2021 -whose information is not known-, nor to the five previous years of contraction. Playing with these information gaps, the president highlighted, for example, the fact that imports grew by 106% in 2022, when they reached 8,194 million dollars. When announcing this increase, he revealed that in 2021 these operations closed at 3,979 million dollars, a figure hitherto unknown and that reveals a 90% drop compared to 2015, when purchases abroad totaled 36,901 million dollars. Thus, today it can be confirmed that imports -as occurs in other areas of the economy, according to independent indicators- contracted enormously in the last seven years, when seven million Venezuelans, according to United Nations estimates, left the country fleeing of the crisis. HOW DOES FOOD IMPROVE? Maduro also celebrated that protein consumption increased in 2022 and is now a reality in 78.3% of Venezuelan households, an improvement compared to five years earlier, when only half of the population, according to the same data, he could access food such as meat, while supermarkets were empty due to a general shortage of products. The way to communicate this information is, in the opinion of nutritionist Susana Rafalli, unclear, but it confirms a truth that the Government denied for years. “In 2017 there was a severe food crisis” which, she admits, has improved, but not to the levels that Maduro claims today. “It is not true that protein has returned to (that percentage of) homes,” says the expert, who recalls, on the other hand, the United Nations estimate published in 2020, according to which one in three people in Venezuela suffers from food insecurity. , a fact that, he insists, improved a little. Although they are late data, Rafalli emphasizes, they reveal the responsibility of the Executive for the actions that were not taken in time to mitigate the malnutrition that claimed the lives of thousands of people in recent years. Venezuelans have been “hit” in recent years, according to Maduro, who did not make it clear how strong the blow was. Héctor Pereira (c) EFE Agency
