- Venezuela, which has the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, is in the midst of a five-year crisis that has left many of its people unable to afford food and medicine, with shelves bare in supermarkets. Crime rates continue to set records, with local residents fearful to leave the house at night. Also inflation rates are very high.
- Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías was a Venezuelan politician who was President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013.
- Venezuela is a federal presidential democratic state where the President is head of state and government as well. In my opinion, the government that Venezuela have is a dictatorship because seventeen people have died in Venezuela’s massive power outage, “murdered” by the government of President Nicolas Maduro, opposition leader Juan Guaido ( https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/americas/venezuela-guaido-maduro-blackout/index.html)
- I would feel like I was living in a prison and wanted to leave a country because there’s a scarcity of food.
- International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists are predicting that Venezuela’s inflation rate could exceed 1,000,000% this year.
- South Americans have welcomed more than two million Venezuelans without taking any of the restrictive measures. Brazil is stepping up efforts to relocate Venezuelans from the isolated north of the country to bigger cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo so they can find work and settle more easily.
RESEARCH
https://www.focus-economics.com/countries/venezuela
Summary: In oil-rich Venezuela, people are suffering from hyperinflation. People don’t have money to buy food and infant mortality rates are increasing. Three million people have fled the country because of these conditions. Some people are living with a salary of $10 per month. People on a basic salary cannot buy basic food. They depend on the staples provided by the government, which do not reach the majority of the population. Over 22,000 doctors have left the country since 2015. People have no access to medical services. Diego Moya-Ocampos says “The reason why Venezuela’s economy is in such a dire state is because of widespread corruption and epic mismanagement by government officials. Some of the assets like oil have been laundered in different places, like the Caribbean, in the US and in some Latin American countries.”
Economics 12 