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- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
- From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
- Subject: VENEZUELA DEBT: WORST YET TO COME
- Message-ID: <1992Aug29.051047.3431@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
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- Organization: PACH
- Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 05:10:47 GMT
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- Lines: 176
-
- /** reg.samerica: 143.0 **/
- ** Topic: IPS:Venezuela: Debt **
- ** Written 11:27 am Aug 23, 1992 by hrcoord in cdp:reg.samerica **
- From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
- Subject: IPS:Venezuela: Debt
-
- /* Written 12:03 am Aug 23, 1992 by newsdesk in
- cdp:ips.englibrary */ Copyright Inter Press Service 1992, all
- rights reserved. Permission to re- print within 7 days of
- original date only with permission from 'newsdesk'.
-
- Title: VENEZUELA: DEBT -- TEN YEARS LATER, THE WORST IS YET TO
- COME
-
- an inter press service feature
-
- by estrella gutierrez
-
- caracas, aug 19 (ips) -- ten years after the outbreak of the
- foreign debt crisis rocked the world, cold, hard statistics in
- venezuela present a dramatic fact: the infant mortality rate has
- begun to grow again since 1989.
-
- this is an unprecedented break from previous trends in a country
- whose population has seen its real wages slump by 35 percent
- between 1981 and 1991 while the percentage of venezuelans living
- in extreme poverty has gone up from 17 to 35 within the same
- period, according to independent statistics.
-
- the venezuela of the petrol boom, abundant financial resources,
- sustained by a paternalistic state, flamboyant social mobilization
- and levels of egalitarianism rarely seen in this region, gave way,
- almost without transition, to economic stagnation and
- deteriorating living conditions, which generated this year's
- convulsions.
-
- the genesis of the change has a date for venezuelans: feb. 18,
- 1983, the day on which the local currency, the bolivar, was
- devalued for the first time in over 20 years, in a manner plagued
- by errors, which resulted in ''a black friday.''
-
- latin america's fourth largest debtor will end 1992 with foreign
- debt commitments of 28,500 million dollars, barely 1,500 million
- dollars less than in 1982, following a decade in which it paid
- 29.5 billion dollars and contracted new debts to the sum of 11.5
- billion dollars.
-
- researcher gustavo marquez explained that 1983's inevitable
- devaluation became something ''calamitous and scandalous, with
- date and all, and hides the fact that there was not one black
- friday, but various black years which culminated on that day and
- whose effects are still being felt.''
-
- marquez, the director of the research unit of the institute of
- higher administration studies, has just completed a study on
- poverty and social policies in venezuela, which has led him to
- conclude that ''the worst is yet to come.''
-
- in an interview with ips, marques rejected the thesis that the
- crisis is imputable to the foreign debt, which amounts to less
- than three years' exports. ''the debt is a totally exogenous
- event, which masks the fact that the origin of the problems is
- internal,'' he said. (more)
- ----
-
- venezuela: debt (2)
-
- ''it is a problem which has to do with the economy and politics of
- the venezuelan state,'' which, based on the 1973 oil boom, took a
- decision that changed the country's future by becoming a producer
- of heavy industries in addition to its traditional role of
- providing education, health and social security services.''
-
- black friday broke a framework in which everyone was happy: a
- private sector which paid no taxes nor suffered from inflation, a
- public services sector nurtured on current expenditure and another
- productive sector which lived off the external debt.
-
- ''someone has to pay the bill,'' and, in actual fact, it is the
- lower income groups which have been doing so. they are suffering
- the first consequence : inflation.
-
- ''in venezuela there is a severe phenomenon -- inflation affects
- from food to all other sectors,'' marquez said, pointing out that
- in 1989, the first year of an economic deregulation and
- liberalization plan, ''inflation averaged 84 percent and food
- prices increased by 130 percent.''
-
- the second consequence was the stagnation of the economy which,
- from 1979, only began growing again in 1990, ''and the poor are
- once again those who suffer, because fewer and worse jobs are
- being generated.''
-
- the third result cannot be seen in the statistics, but is much
- more pernicious. the budget earmarks equal percentages to
- education and health, but the enormous swelling of the bureaucracy
- and staff has led to an overwhelming deterioration in the quality
- and availability of these services.
-
- the result is the return of diseases which had been eradicated,
- such as tuberculosis, cholera and malaria, because in 1981, for
- example, the health ministry stopped fumigating urban areas so
- that it could take on more staff.
-
- ''the government's increasing dilemma was not between providing
- the population with services or granting resources to public
- enterprises, but giving more power to one of the bureaucracies
- which control one sector or another,'' marquez explained.
-
- the people remain the ''eternal absentee from the discussion and
- suffer the effects of a distorted framework,'' in which the debt
- can be very convenient. for example, it enabled jaime lusinchi,
- the previous president, to use the excuse that ''the banks
- deceived me.''
-
- ''it's tantamount to saying 'i have no problems at home, the
- problems lie with others','' while the population begins to
- participate in the only way it can: burning buses in the streets,
- as the convulsed months of 1992 have shown, marquez said. (more)
- ----
-
- venezuela: debt (3)
-
- this is a phenomenon which, according to the expert, has remained
- and is more serious than the bloody disturbances of february 1989
- ''fruit of the blunder of deciding on increases at the end of a
- month,'' or the coup attempt in february of this year, an incident
- from which the sectors most opposed to change have sought to
- derive benefit.
-
- the debt has ''set dates'' for this crisis, but its solution
- requires a profound reform of the state which, on one hand, will
- have to become smaller, but which will also have to increase its
- checking mechanisms because ''this is a gigantic state which
- regulates nothing.''
-
- the process of modernization launched by president carlos andres
- perez in february 1989 has two poles, according to marquez. in one
- of them, stabilizing the economy, it has had significant success
- and ''few economies have reacted so quickly, even more so given
- the level of deterioration to which it had sunk.''
-
- structural reforms like those applied in trade have also been big
- successes, as was the december 1990 debt negotiation, ''because it
- was done rapidly, transparently and well.''
-
- where outright failure occurred was in changing the state, said
- marquez, who added that privatization ''was ludicrous'' because it
- centred on selling off one of the world's two or three
- communications companies which were running at a loss and an
- airline with five planes.
-
- ''this undermines the durability of the successes achieved in
- stabilization,'' such as increased employment and the reduction of
- the informal sector, and it is tragic for the population , because
- services have neither been rehabilitated nor upgraded, he pointed
- out.
-
- marquez' study, done with conservative figures, shows that, along
- with the ''unmeasurable'' but evident collapse of services, there
- have also been tragic changes in the composition of venezuelan
- society.
-
- the drop in real salaries, which experienced a turnaround only in
- 1990, produced a breakdown in society, in which those who have
- less see that, unlike before, their destiny depends to a large
- extent on where they started.
-
- up to 1981, poverty in venezuela was text-book poverty:
- uneducated parents, single mothers and large families. by 1991,
- the poor no longer fell into these categories, they are also
- families with both parents, are more educated and have fewer
- children. (more)
- ----
- ** End of text from cdp:reg.samerica **
-
-