Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Chávez spending his money on a good cause

The BBC article says it all.

Posted by Greg Weeks at 7:36 AM
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4 comments:

Camilo Pino,  8:20 PM  

Hilarious story. Appreciate your humor.

One must concede that Chavez knows how to get a return from his advertising dollars, (definitely the largest share of his budget).

A pity he is not investing that money in non-populist social programs.

Indeed, I just got across the most peculiar, and sad, statistics:

1998: 49% of the Venezuelan population was poor.
2005: 57.9% of the Venezuelan population is poor.
That is a 8.9% increase in poverty since Chavez took office.

1998: 20.5% of the population was extremely poor.
2005: 13.3% of the population is extremely poor.

That is a decrease in extreme poverty levels of 7.5% in 7 years, that is a yearly average of 1.1%.

1998: 69.5% of Venezuelans were poor or extremely poor.
2005: 71.2% of Venezuelans were poor or extremely poor.

That is an increase in poverty and extreme poverty levels of 1.7% since Chavez took office.

1998: Oil barrel valued at $11.91
2005: Oil barrel valued at $70.00

Oil represents 80% of Venezuela´s income. For each dollar variation
Venezuela´s government gets roughly a billion dollar per year.

Source: Poverty data from el ¨Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y
Sociales¨ , UCAB (http://www.acuerdosocial.com/index.asp)

Greg Weeks,  8:11 AM  

The Venezuela poverty debate is interesting, because you can read wildly diverging appraisals. In the Feb 11 issue, The Economist--no friend of Chávez--argued that poverty had decreased, but that high oil prices should've served to decrease it far more. I suppose it always depends where the numbers come from.

But at least flatulence may be decreasing...

Camilo Pino,  8:08 PM  
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Camilo Pino,  8:13 PM  

Flatulence is indeed decreasing.
Poverty as well, but very slowly.

The article from The Economist refers to the last two years.

ALso, the above numbers, taken from an academic source, record a notable decrease in extreme proverty.But people forget Chavez has been in power for seven years, not two.

Venezuela's GDP was of 117.1 billion in the year 2000. In the year 2005 it was of 116.2 billion. In real terms the growth is negative.

In percentual terms, there was double digit growth in 2004 because 2003's GDP was -7% (negative).

If you look at the big picture things are terrible.

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