Venezuela: after years of silence, officially confirm the economic debacle

CARACAS.- The site of the Central Bank of

Venezuela

(BCV) began last night to spit one piece after another without warning and in the middle of the national surprise. After more than three years of silence imposed by

Nicolás Maduro

, with some of the figures not updated since 2012, BCV provided its official data, which do not coincide with those provided by local economists and international entities
like the IMF, but they confirm the disaster.

According to the BCV, gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 47.6% between 2015 and 2018, which is close to the badysis of the World Bank (WB), which termed the collapse of the Venezuela's "worst crisis in the modern history of the region". Subtracting the last three months of last year and the World Bank forecast for 2019 (contraction of 25%),
Venezuela would continue to lead the historical ranking of the worst economic depressions, matching the Syrian civil war.

The 51% of GDP lost during the first presidency of "Chávez's son" far exceeds the forecasts of the 29 United States, the crisis in Greece, the Spanish Civil War or the Weimar Republic, according to studies from the American economist Steve Hanke.

To GDP data, so powerful that they would have caused the fall of the government in the rest of the planet, add to those of inflation, much more shy and remote from reality: the rise of price, according to the BCV, reached last year After a start of escalation in 2015 (180.9%), 130 060% continued in 2016 (274.4%) and stretched in 2017 (862 , 6%). The IMF, on the other hand, placed it at 1,370,000 last year and the Democratic Parliament, tasked with providing the country with what the government has concealed, corroborates it with its own calculation: 1,698,488% .

"This is the highest rate in the history of Latin America, whether we use the rate reported by the BCV or the much higher calculated by Parliament," summed up the economist Urbi Garay.

Hidden figures

The first figures that Chavismo began to hide in the early Chávez era were those referring to violence. Under the Maduro government, the catalog of censorship was extended to economic, health and social statistics. Those paid yesterday include until the third quarter of 2018, before the application of international sanctions and the oil embargo this year, currently used by the government of Nicolás Maduro to justify the death of 39, children without graft to shortage and rationing of gasoline in the interior of the country.

"The BCV also confirms that most economic destruction took place well before the sanctions," said Henkel Garcia, director of Econometric, who, over the years of statistical concealment, has also provided his own measures.

The economist Garay also challenges the government figures on the construction of social housing, one of the main axes of chauvinist propaganda: Maduro celebrated the delivery of three million homes this month, in the framework of the Great Real Estate Mission of Venezuela. This seems impossible according to BCV figures, which ensures that GDP in the construction sector has dropped by 95% between 2012 and 2018. "It's the one that has fallen the most, it's not not built, "said Garay.