Impact of the Economic War on Venezuela
- Pasqualina Curcio -
t would be impossible to count each and every one
of the
ways in which the war declared by imperialism on Venezuela has harmed
the country. The aggressions that we, the Venezuelans, have experienced
since 1999 have been not only economic; they have been psychological as
well. There is no way to measure the consequences of the hate sown by
the anti-democratic opposition, with its anti-socialist propaganda; it
has extended to the point of burning people alive for looking like
Chavistas. The outrage felt by the Venezuelan people towards those who
have sold out their native land while calling themselves Venezuelan is
also immeasurable.
Having said that, but focusing on the economic
effects, we have updated the calculations we did in March 2019. Up to
that point the economic war had caused losses that reached
$125,000,000,000. We have calculated the corresponding damages for the
year 2019 as totaling $68,000,000,000. Thus, the total economic losses
between 2016 and 2019 were $194,000,000,000. For Venezuelans, these
$194 billion are equivalent to approximately 16 months of national
production. With that money we would have been able to pay off our
entire foreign debt, which is $110 billion, according to the Central
Bank of Venezuela. Or we could have had enough resources to import food
and medicine for 45 years.
The breakdown of these losses is as follows: $25
billion
corresponds to the money and assets that have been looted from us,
while $169 billion represents what we have been unable to produce from
2016 to 2019 as a result of the attack on Petróleos de
Venezuela
SA ($64 billion) and the attack on the Venezuelan bolivar ($105
billion). John Bolton confessed in January of 2019 that "We froze all
the assets in U.S. territory of the state enterprise
Petróleos
de Venezuela SA (Citgo). Today's measure totals $7 billion in assets
blocked at this time, plus over $11 billion lost in projected earnings
from exports over the next year."
According to the Ministry of Foreign Relations,
the U.S. and its allies have looted $25 billion from us. They disguise
this as "sanctions" while others elegantly call it unilateral coercive
measures, but it is nothing more than a barefaced daylight robbery and
an act of piracy. About $5.4 billion are held in 50 banks, including
the 31 tons of gold that the Bank of England has retained. The assets
and dividends of Citgo, amounting to $18 billion, are also included.
They have not only robbed us but, in addition, in
January 2019, the U.S. State Department announced that they turned the
assets, property, and goods in bank accounts belonging to the
Venezuelan government over to Guaidó, meaning he has been
responsible for the administration of these resources. We would like to
know just how many of these dollars have been spent to protect the
people of Venezuela in these times of quarantine? What is very clear to
us is that $200 million of those dollars were allocated for a contract
with SilverCorp for the purpose of paying mercenaries to kill
Venezuelans.
With regard to the gold held by the Bank of
England, we must say that the bank is required to return it to its
owner immediately upon request. Now it seems, according to the English,
that the owner is Guaidó, who they say is the "interim
president" of Venezuela. This is such a crude robbery that no one in
their right mind would believe anything so absurd. The whole world
knows that it is not Guaidó who is seated in the UN General
Assembly, nor in the UN Human Rights Council, nor in the UN Security
Council, nor in the meetings of OPEC. Obviously he is not seated in the
presidential palace of Miraflores either, nor does he give orders to
the National Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela.
Is it Guaidó who is confronting
COVID-19 in Venezuela and coordinating medical aid and protocols with
the world Health Organization?
William Brownfield, ex-ambassador of the U.S. in
Venezuela, admitted, "If we are going to sanction PDVSA, this will have
an impact on the entire people, on the ordinary citizen. The
counter-argument is that the people are suffering so much from the lack
of food, security, medicines, public health, that at this moment
perhaps the greatest resolution would be to accelerate the collapse
even if it produces a period of suffering of months or perhaps years."
The attack on Petróleos de Venezuela is
not being done casually; it is a premeditated and precisely aimed
action. Anything that affects the oil industry will have repercussions
not only in the industry itself, but chiefly on the national economy
and thus on the Venezuelan people.
The oil industry generates 95 per cent of the hard
currency that enters Venezuela as a result of exports. The decrease of
these exports, whether due to a fall in the levels of petroleum
production or by a decrease in petroleum prices, affects the influx of
hard currency, and thus the imports of supplies, spare parts, machinery
for national production. Petróleos de Venezuela is the
catalyst for our domestic production.
The price of oil fell for four consecutive years
for the first time in history, making for a 65 per cent decrease. In
addition, the commercial and financial blockade against
Petróleos de Venezuela, the difficulty or impossibility of
getting supplies and spare parts, and the financial obstacles, among
other reasons, have affected petroleum production, which has decreased
by 64 per cent -- going from 2.8 million barrels a day in 2013 to one
million in 2019. This has resulted in a 78 per cent fall in petroleum
exports, which went from $85 billion annually in 2013 to $19 billion in
2019.
Republican Virginia State Senator Richard Black
admitted, referring to Venezuela, "We demonetized their currency and,
through the international banking system, we made the Venezuelan
currency worthless and then we go and say: 'Look how bad this
government is, its currency is worthless.' Well, it wasn't them; it was
us who made their currency useless." (Sputnik 09-12-2019).
The attack on the Venezuelan bolivar, a main
weapon of the economic war, not only induced hyperinflation and with
this the loss of the buying power of the working class, it also shrunk
national production. As wage earners see their buying power diminish
due to a rapid and disproportionate rise in prices, this also decreases
the demand for goods and causes a decrease in production by sellers.
Since 2013, imperialism has caused a criminal
depreciation of the Venezuelan bolivar by 241,657 million per cent,
which has given rise to an increase in prices by 11,500 million per
cent from that year to this.
Each person can come to their own conclusions
about what these economic losses of $194 billion mean in terms of
anguish, outrage, quality of life and lives of Venezuelans. Draw your
own conclusions as well about the immeasurable level of consciousness
and thus of resistance shown by the Venezuelan people who have
confronted the enemies of their country with high morale and with the
best of strategies: civilian-military union.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 26 - July 18, 2020
Article Link:
Impact of the Economic War on Venezuela - Pasqualina Curcio
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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