Venezuela's economic collapse is laid bare when you look at how little energy.......
........the country is consuming.
The country with the most oil reserves on the planet is facing a total economic crash, with wildly conflicting inflation estimates – as high as 10,000,000% if the IMF’s projections for this year are correct. There has been much discussion about the collapse in Venezuela’s oil exports, intensified by US sanctions against the state oil company PDVSA, which substantially prevents any oil trading between the two countries and takes away a steady income stream for the country. To understand the scale of the crisis, however, it is vital to look at what has been happening to energy consumption inside the country itself.
Oil consumption in Venezuela fell 37% in five years up to 2017, a reminder that the country was struggling under the Maduro administration long before the latest sanctions, which came after opposition leader Juan Guaidó announced himself the country’s rightful president in January. Unfortunately, the oil decline is not an environmental achievement but a worrying symptom of Venezuela’s economic conditions – GDP is expected to have fallen 50% between 2015 and 2019.
Diesel consumption declined by 11% on average each year in 2013-17, and gasoline shows a similar pattern with an average annual decline of 7% or by 27% over the same five-year period. Together, the two fuels account for approximately 70% of total oil demand in the country. From the graphic below, you can see that the collapse in oil consumption and GDP are staggeringly similar.
[
]
The view from the ground
People are not driving around anymore in Venezuela. To make things worse, 90% of buses were reportedly out of action by mid-2018. This is a society that just doesn’t go out for work or travel. Businesses are also using less transportation, since they produce fewer goods than they used to – including food. The last implication is terrifying, and can easily be missed when solely looking at numbers. It is possible to survive without a car, but not without food. A litre of milk can now easily cost a tenth of a monthly salary.
Read much more:
http://theconversation.com/venezuelas-economic-collapse-is-laid-bare-when-you-look-at-how-little-energy-the-country-is-consuming-112990
---------------------------------------------------------------------
That last sentence. I don't know how much milk costs in the cities, but here in the sticks where I buy it hot out of the cow, it's 1,000 bs per liter. That's 5.6% of the monthly salary. Add in transport to, and processing in, the cities and I can easily believe it reaches a tenth of a monthly salary. For the record, I've not seen processed, bottled milk sold anywhere here in YEARS.
= new reply since forum marked as read
......being willfully misled. I am definitely of the pro coup crowd, but also call 'em like I see 'em.
Outside of a few wealthy areas of Caracas I'd challenge anyone to find a well-supplied supermarket in most cities. I've explained why Caracas is the best-supplied city in the country. At the low income level it all has to do with keeping the masses calm. Maduro can't afford thousands of angry barrio-dwellers advancing on Miraflores demanding his head on a stick because of food shortages.
On the coast at Barcelona, Lecheria for example, one might find a well-stocked supermarket because of the wealthy who still live in that area and because there is still some tourist trade. Prices? Since Venezuela produces little of its needs, everything's based on the value of the dollar which is somewhere near 4,000 bs right now. When the average Venezuelan who has a job earns 18,000 bs per MONTH, you think they buy groceries every day at a supermarket like that? Only the remaining wealthy can afford to shop at well-stocked supermarkets.
Maturin, a major city to the east of here is thread-bare these days. I know this because my woman makes regular trips there (we still have some family and a home there) to buy products for re-sale. She usually returns with a fraction of what she was hoping to find. She says stores like Sigo and UniCasa, the largest in the city, are usually at least 50% bare and what is on the shelves is often of a single product. That's to say, if there's something like toilet paper or cooking oil, it's the same brand that fills up an entire shelf. I just asked her about milk in cartons and she said, "forget about that".
Here's something worth reading from Huffington Post that shows the norm here. Yeah, that right-wing rag.
A customer pushes a shopping cart past an empty meat counter at a grocery store in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 9, 2018. Hordes of desperate shoppers emptied supermarkets and bodegas after the government ordered hundreds of grocery stores slash their prices in the latest attempt to stem hyperinflation.
[
]
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/venezuela-empty-grocery-shelves-photos_us_5a567751e4b08a1f624afcf6
More from that same article.
[
]
[
]
[
]
[
]
[
]
How long do you think supermarkets can remain open when the government forces them to sell below cost?
"... If (the government) doesn’t act soon, resolving the consequences of its stagnation in these economic and social aspects, these will do more damage than any missile or incoming imperialist “humanitarian aid”. If it doesn’t control problems, effectively and in the long term, such as currency exchange speculation, supply shortages, and the price of food and medicines, or encourage the national production of goods and services, in the mid-term it will lose its social base and will find it difficult to survive. Among other measures it has to decide to stop paying the foreign debt, block capital flight, impose progressive taxation on assets, and promote the distribution and control of goods by a Communal State and of the workers. Otherwise we will fail... "
This government has been in control for 20 years and the place has been wrecked. Now they're somehow going to fix it?
I'm reminded of when a chavista tells me, with a slow nod of authority, that there are warehouses full of rice, pasta, flour, you name it, all over the country, just waiting for the right price before it's released for sale. I then ask him, if that's the case, who's screwing the pueblo? The opposition? Afterall, who controls the dollars that are used to buy imported products? Who controls the ports? Who controls the permits required to move most ANYTHING by road in this country? Who controls the thousands upon thousands of armed road blocks all over the country that check papers and cargoes? All of that and yet the opposition is still screwing the pueblo?
The usual response:
