Venezuelan government fails to meet goal of 120,000 housing units

[ChangoLoa]

During his Annual Address to the National Assembly, President Hugo Chávez referred to the housing deficit in Venezuela, but rather than announcing completion of housing units, he disclosed plans to build houses in the future.

Chávez disclosed an "ambitious" plan to build 150,000 housing units in 2011 and 200.000 housing units in 2012.

The government made similar announcements in previous fiscal years, but has always failed to meet the goal. In 2005, Chávez said that his government would build 120,000 housing units throughout the period and in 2006. However, according to the Reports and Accounts of the Ministry of Housing, the government failed the target during those two years.

In fact, the Reports and Accounts of the Ministry of Housing show that the government built 21,400 housing units in 2005, which is only 18 percent of the target (120,000 housing units.) Meanwhile, 40,340 housing units were built in 2006 (88 percent more than in the previous period), but only 34 percent of the initial goal of building 120,000 housing units.


http://english.eluniversal.com/2011/01/17/en_eco_esp_venezuelan-governmen_17A4997051.shtml

[social_critic]

1. Chango, if you could see inside PDVSA, you would understand

The Chavez government has tried to prop up PDVSA with the brightest of their Chavista cadres - because PDVSA is the key to their survival, which requires immense cash flow from oil exports to pay for their clientelist communist system.

However, if we look inside PDVSA, we see a mismanaged corporation. There are two basic issues involved. One, the senior positions are all given to individuals who claim to be communists. Notice I don't say they have to be communist, because that's not the way it works. In a communist regime, many wise guys realize right away that gaming the system requires they become ardent Chavez supporters. Communism doesn't matter to them, but the ability to feed at the through via corrupt practices does. This leads to a large number of people whose main focus areas are: 1) Showing they are Chavez followers and 2) Stealing (via corrupt practices).

The second main issue is the lack of a rational decision making and resource allocation system. They work with near religious zeal on social causes (which they also manage to botch as shown by PDVAL's rotten food case), while neglecting their core function which is to produce and refine crude oil. Their planning is unrealistic, they never accomplish what they say they will do, and the top of the corporation is full of people who don't understand basic management practices in a modern corporation.

To make matters even worse, in a system where talented people can go elsewhere, the low wages imposed on PDVSA's payroll by law and by Chavez decree have a really sickening effect: all the smart guys who are easy to recruit to move to other countries are being recruited and taken out. This is being done in particular by Arab nations, which have found a gold mine of professional talent desperate to get out of Venezuela and make a decent wage.

Which means that as the regime becomes more and more extremist, and more dependent on PDVSA's oil, PDVSA gets weaker and weaker, produces less and less oil, and slowly disintegrates. Which explains why Veenzuela's oil production today is a lot lower than it used to be, and why it's importing natural gas from Colombia even though it has the largest natural gas reserves in South America.

[EFerrari]

2. The Cold War has been over for twenty years. n/t

[social_critic]

3. That's right - I helped end it

I was around to make sure the Soviet Union fell gently and without firing a shot.

But we're not discussing the cold war. I was discussing PDVSA's degrading performance, and my own observations. Its management is in very bad shape.