Caracas (AFP)
Venezuela recorded between 2014 and 2019 a "brutal" drop of 99% of its oil revenues, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said on Tuesday.
“Between 2014 and 2019, Venezuela experienced the most brutal drop in export revenues in its history, perhaps this is the first time that I have referred to these figures in public: in six years we have lost 99% of our income in foreign currency, ”he said in a television and radio address.
Since 2015 "the rate of fall in Venezuela's export revenues has amounted to $ 30 billion per year," he said.
"This figure defies the imagination, it turns out to be impossible to imagine even the extent of the pressure that has been placed on our economy," added the Venezuelan president.
According to Mr. Maduro, head of the country with the largest reserves of crude oil in the world, "for every 100 dollars obtained in 2014 from the sale of oil, today we get less than one."
As a result, oil revenues will drop from more than $ 56 billion in 2013 "to less than $ 400 million last year," he calculated.
This debacle, he explained, "had as its main cause the declared war on oil prices" in order "to attack the main producers in the world", and then, "we went to phase two, collapse, total persecution of the country's economy and finances. "
But according to experts, who recognize that the sanctions imposed on Venezuela have "exacerbated" the crisis, the origin is to be found in macroeconomic mismanagement and corruption.
In order to combat the effects of these sanctions, Mr. Maduro presented to the Constituent Assembly, controlled by his supporters unlike Parliament, an "anti-blockade" law, supposed to help the country circumvent these sanctions.
An independent body, Encovi, said last July that poverty indices had reached unprecedented levels.
In 2019, 96.2% of Venezuelan households were considered poor and 79.3% of them as "extremely poor", against 92.6% and 76.5% respectively the previous year.
© 2020 AFP