Post by ukipa on Apr 3, 2013 19:35:12 GMT 4
Tal Cual: What If Nicolás Maduro Wins?
The Holy Week breather is over and all that is left is a long stretch to December, of a year that seems tough and tricky. And besides the governmental team, Nicolás Maduro does not inspire any trust as to his skills to handle complicated matters.
By Tal Cual
Well, the year 2013 has officially kicked off. Until now, we had lived of what is left of last year. The Holy Week breather is over and all that is left is a long stretch to December, of a year that seems tough and tricky for Venezuela.
And besides the governmental team, leftist presidential candidate Nicolás Maduro does not inspire any trust as to his skills to handle complicated matters. There are high suspicions that he’s got a serious deficit of that kind of knowledge and general skills that give true leaders the ability to face – and even dodge – the toughest situations and besides, his speech, at least up until now, hasn’t stopped being a repetition of silly stuff and praises to the late president, Hugo Chávez, without having shown he’s got balls for the job.
The year 2013 had already inherited a deep economic crisis late last year, one that has given signs of getting worse over the past few months.
The Chávez regime has deepened the so-called paradox of abundance, typical of those countries rich in natural resources whose high prices fill the pockets of the “lucky ones,” but that are squandered in mysterious ways without leaving anything that is worth it as to an alternate economy. That is certainly the case of Venezuela.
During the entire period of the Chávez regime, but particularly during the last few years, the nation experienced a torrential flooding of petrodollars, whose net effect has been surreal for certain.
The tax authority has met a deficit rather than a surplus, one that reached 18% of the GDP at its worst moment and one that, through devaluation, has been reduced between 13%-14%, something that doesn’t call for a celebration either. How did they manage to poke a huge fiscal hole in an economy where hard currency abounds? This is a mystery that maybe Minister of Finance and Planning Jorge Giordani would like to try to explain.
But the deficit brought along another inevitable consequence. Addressing the deficit has two options: borrow money from national and international banks and/or issue bonds from the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) or state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), something which, in the long run, is nothing but another modality of indebting the State.
The Government opted to do both things. What’s certain is that indebtedness, putting together the central State and PDVSA, already hit $200 billion, something in the neighborhood of 70% of the GDP, a figure that if not considered catastrophic is something not to joke about.
Where does all this lead to? Giordani made a proposal of an austerity policy: “We’re not giving away anything else,” he dared to say now that the most prominent squanderer of all time, Hugo Chávez, is gone. A finance minister that doesn’t dare to tell his boss the truth is, deep down inside, the big responsible for a disaster.
We were aware that the ignorance of Chávez in economic affairs was something less than encyclopedic, but we could think of Giordani as someone who at least knew a few principles and, still and all, he remained silent.
Things do not bode well for the country. A head of state who, with all due respect, is a true ignorant and who doesn’t inspire confidence at all; an ailing economy with a productive apparatus, including the one from the oil sector, that has been severely battered; a finance minister with the attitude of a toad.
Tell me where all this would go to should Maduro win the elections on April 14! Waiting for him to straighten things out is an illusion. What we really need here is a different government. The question here is whether or not Venezuelan people are going to vote for the candidate of their choice.
Source of original article:
www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=733358&CategoryId=13303
The Holy Week breather is over and all that is left is a long stretch to December, of a year that seems tough and tricky. And besides the governmental team, Nicolás Maduro does not inspire any trust as to his skills to handle complicated matters.
By Tal Cual
Well, the year 2013 has officially kicked off. Until now, we had lived of what is left of last year. The Holy Week breather is over and all that is left is a long stretch to December, of a year that seems tough and tricky for Venezuela.
And besides the governmental team, leftist presidential candidate Nicolás Maduro does not inspire any trust as to his skills to handle complicated matters. There are high suspicions that he’s got a serious deficit of that kind of knowledge and general skills that give true leaders the ability to face – and even dodge – the toughest situations and besides, his speech, at least up until now, hasn’t stopped being a repetition of silly stuff and praises to the late president, Hugo Chávez, without having shown he’s got balls for the job.
The year 2013 had already inherited a deep economic crisis late last year, one that has given signs of getting worse over the past few months.
The Chávez regime has deepened the so-called paradox of abundance, typical of those countries rich in natural resources whose high prices fill the pockets of the “lucky ones,” but that are squandered in mysterious ways without leaving anything that is worth it as to an alternate economy. That is certainly the case of Venezuela.
During the entire period of the Chávez regime, but particularly during the last few years, the nation experienced a torrential flooding of petrodollars, whose net effect has been surreal for certain.
The tax authority has met a deficit rather than a surplus, one that reached 18% of the GDP at its worst moment and one that, through devaluation, has been reduced between 13%-14%, something that doesn’t call for a celebration either. How did they manage to poke a huge fiscal hole in an economy where hard currency abounds? This is a mystery that maybe Minister of Finance and Planning Jorge Giordani would like to try to explain.
But the deficit brought along another inevitable consequence. Addressing the deficit has two options: borrow money from national and international banks and/or issue bonds from the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) or state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), something which, in the long run, is nothing but another modality of indebting the State.
The Government opted to do both things. What’s certain is that indebtedness, putting together the central State and PDVSA, already hit $200 billion, something in the neighborhood of 70% of the GDP, a figure that if not considered catastrophic is something not to joke about.
Where does all this lead to? Giordani made a proposal of an austerity policy: “We’re not giving away anything else,” he dared to say now that the most prominent squanderer of all time, Hugo Chávez, is gone. A finance minister that doesn’t dare to tell his boss the truth is, deep down inside, the big responsible for a disaster.
We were aware that the ignorance of Chávez in economic affairs was something less than encyclopedic, but we could think of Giordani as someone who at least knew a few principles and, still and all, he remained silent.
Things do not bode well for the country. A head of state who, with all due respect, is a true ignorant and who doesn’t inspire confidence at all; an ailing economy with a productive apparatus, including the one from the oil sector, that has been severely battered; a finance minister with the attitude of a toad.
Tell me where all this would go to should Maduro win the elections on April 14! Waiting for him to straighten things out is an illusion. What we really need here is a different government. The question here is whether or not Venezuelan people are going to vote for the candidate of their choice.
Source of original article:
www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=733358&CategoryId=13303