Credibility

November 29, 2018 00h20

The IMF announces that the inflation rate for 2018 will be 2,500,000%. The Venezuelan economy is collapsing. Its main sector, the oil tanker, is also. It is essential to understand what is happening.

Those who govern today had the habit of saying before coming to power that PDVSA was a black box. The truth is that it was the most controlled, audited and supervised society in the country.

Currently, most of these controls are gone. For starters, the president of PDVSA, who should report to the Minister of Petroleum, is the Minister of Petroleum himself. It's paid and the return is given. Since the opposition controls the National Assembly, PDVSA has refused to be accountable and, when it was controlled by the ruling party, it only served to block any investigation that undermined to the interests of the regime and its relatives.

It is now like a black hole in space that hides some of the biggest corruption cases that the continent has been victim of throughout its history, just as we are surprised to learn daily from open investigations in D & D. Other countries.

PDVSA is indebted to unpayable levels. In fact, it is said that the only paid bonds are the so-called 2020, because they come from bonds maturing in 2017 and that, in order to refinance them until 2020, 50.1% of Citgo shares were offered as collateral. By the way, the remaining 49% of these shares were pledged to the Russian oil company Rosneft, whose chairman, Igor Sechin, was in Caracas this week, according to Reuters, claiming the delay in oil deliveries with which PDVSA s # He was engaged to pay the debt. It is perhaps for this reason that Russia's deputy finance minister, Sergey Storchak, said that there were no new loans for Venezuela.

With China, the debt settlement with oil is not going well either, given the dramatic fall in our production. The commitment to send 500,000 b / d has not been fulfilled. It is said that the Chinese are exploring the possibility of charging Guayana's core businesses.

The same thing happens in all public entities. For example, unlike the global trend, the state has not provided information on crime indicators for several years. Nor does it provide essential health statistics for disease control, to address health problems and to prioritize the use of resources. Diseases such as diphtheria, malaria, tuberculosis and measles are coming back in force. The same is true for BCV, which does not publish the figures it is legally required to provide, as the IMF threatens to impose sanctions on Venezuela.

And of course, there is the case of OPEC, which publishes monthly its monthly report on the oil market with basic statistics of global oil activity.

Referring to production statistics, OPEC presents two different tables each month. The first contains the official data provided by the governments of the organization and the second, the same production data but provided by "secondary sources".

The term "secondary sources" refers to those obtained from six different sources. These companies include S & P Global Platts, Argus Media, Energy Intelligence Group, IHS-Markit, Energy Information Energy (EIA) and International Energy Agency (IEA).

In the particular case of Venezuela, the official figures are very different from those proposed by these secondary sources. Let's see:

According to the "direct communication", the government says that the country produced 1 433 000 b / d last October. However, citing "secondary sources", OPEC reports that production was 1,171,000 b / d with a 40,000 bpd drop from the previous month. In 10 months, it decreased by 739,000 b / d. The price has also fallen sharply.

The International Energy Agency says that our production is in free fall. Today, we produce the same thing as in 1947 and we have the same production per capita as in 1927.

On the economic front, as on any other subject, the loss of credibility of the party in power is overwhelming.

@josetorohardy