Venezuela is a beautiful country like any other in South America, but do you know what exactly is going on inside? What has been happening? What their status is? Ever hear about the country at all? If not, you might have been living under a rock this whole time.
Let me quickly brief you on the economic situation.
Since President Nicolás Maduro came to power in 2013 after the death of Hugo Chavez, he has been facing social unrest. Maduro has tried to shift blame for shortages created by price controls, subsidies, rigid regulations and other deeply flawed economic policies onto what remains of Venezuela's private sector.
Access to U.S. dollars is highly restricted and the business climate is hostile. According to the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, "In 2015 the government made the first withdrawals of Special Drawing Rights from the International Monetary Fund since 1997. Venezuela’s international reserves continue to fall, and a debt default is not out of the question."
The starting point might have been when Chávez turned the state-owned oil company from being professionally run to being barely run. According to the Washington Post people who knew what they were doing were replaced with people, who were loyal to the regime, and profits came out but new investment didn't come in. That last part was particularly bad because Venezuela's extra-heavy crude needs to be blended or refined — neither of which is cheap — before it can be sold.
The price Venezuela receives for its oil exports, which accounts for about 95 percent of foreign currency earnings, has fallen 52 percent in the past year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
So To tell you how bad the condition of living are for the people of Venezuela are here is a photo showing how people get groceries.
People queue outside a supermarket in Caracas. (Federico Parra/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
Yeah that's right, that's how bad the conditions are for the Venezuelan people. They are so bad to the point that you have to stand in a line just to buy the essentials for living, and to get some of those products you have to go to the black market as if they were drugs or weapons. What people are experiencing is deeply shocking.
Between riots and looting, the crime rate has been increasing making people leave the country. Because the education levels in Venezuela have gone down, many of the schools have been closing and the annual dropout rate has doubled. More than a quarter of teenagers are not enrolled in schools.
According to an article in CBC's The Current, "Maria Alejandra Torres, a hematologist-oncologist in Venezuela, told [the publication] that the country's health-care practitioners lack basic drugs and hospital supplies, which has resulted in the death of patients with treatable conditions."
In other words, the situation in Venezuela is catastrophic; a total chaos is happening for the population and Venezuela's government is just sitting there like nothing happened. Even President Maduro is denying the crisis even though the economy is collapsing piece by piece because of his decisions. Be strong Venezuela, you're gonna need it.
