Venezuelan Economy Showing Healthy Signs
Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, announced positive economic figures last week to suggest that the Venezuelan economy is in a healthy state.
Speaking at a Council of Ministers meeting last Monday, in the Presidential Palace in Caracas and on live national television, Chavez presented figures which demonstrated that the external debt of the Venezuelan economy is currently running at a comparatively low 25% of the Gross Domestic Product.
Analyzing the economic figures, and referring to the recovery of the economy from the situation in which it found itself during the 1990’s when IMF and World Bank policies were implemented, the President stated that “the recuperation of the Venezuelan economy is perfectly sustainable”.
Chavez went on to explain that the internal debt of the Venezuelan economy currently consumes 11.4% of the Gross National Product (GNP), which itself has risen sharply in the last 10 years.
The recently re-elected president cited figures from 1998, which show the national GNP to be around $90 billion in that year, and compared them to the end of year figures in 2012, where the GNP stands at around $320 billion.
“This year we are finishing with a GNP around $320 billion. The Venezuelan GNP has almost tripled in the last decade; this has never occurred before in Venezuela” said the head of state.
He also went on to state that the government designated 1.1% of the national GNP in 2011 to pay the interests on foreign debt. These figures reinforce other trends that officials cite as positive for the Venezuelan economy, which continues to grow at 6%, and has seen inflation fall from 100% in 1998 to 30% in 2008 and is expected to close the year below the 20% mark.
Comparing the Venezuelan economy to those of many central capitalist countries, which continue to suffer from the market based problems which have seen recession spreading, Chavez announced that the Venezuelan economy sees itself in a much more robust state.
“The foreign debt of the United States of America has risen to 300% of its GNP, while Venezuela’s only reaches 25%”, he explained.
According to recently released IMF figures, external debt as a percentage of GNP has risen by an average of 31.8% between 2007 and 2010 in the major capitalist economies, and across the 10 countries the report looked at, currently stands at 90.6% as a weighted average.
According to the IMF, who’s leader, Christine Lagarde is due to visit Colombia in the following days, France was coping in 2010 with a debt of 82.4% of its GNP (20% higher than in 2007), while in Germany, much considered to be the most stable European economy, the figure stood at 83.2% (23.45 higher than in 2007).
In Portugal the figure stood at 93.4% (33.2% higher than in 2007), while in the UK it was at 75.1% (32.65 higher than 2007), and 142.8% in Greece (69.6 higher than in 2007), 92.5% in Ireland (69.15 higher than 2007), and 92.8% in Iceland (64.3% higher than 2007).