Journal entries about news for international business class

Excerpt from BBC World News article on Venezuela

Venezuela's black economic magic

By John Sweeney BBC, Caracas

17 February 2016

“Statistics of any kind in Venezuela should be taken with a swig of the local rum - like beer, unavailable in a restaurant we visited in Caracas - but under Maduro the Bolivar is currently suffering from inflation of 141%, according to the government's own figures. The IMF predicts it will hit 720% later this year.

One number is that the country is $120 billion in the red, with oil revenue - responsible for nine-tenths of the state's export revenue - collapsing. Without the oil money, the country can't feed itself.

There are $10bn in debt payments due later this year and Venezuela can't borrow easily because the international market suspects it will default. Investors are already spooked because it has expropriated billions of dollars worth of foreign-owned companies.

Governing party MP Ramon Lobo told Newsnight: "The economic war has become even more vicious. It's an attack on the real economy. The oligarchs who still dominate food production are looking for a way to hang us by cutting production on purp

Murder numbers are notoriously dodgy in South American, but Caracas, by some estimates, suffered nearly 4,000 murders last year, making it one of the most dangerous cities in the world. “

And then there is the Zika plague - the mosquito-borne virus that some doctors believe is responsible for a spike in cases of creeping paralysis, Gillain-Barré syndrome, and, in Brazil, deformed babies. (The World Health Organisation has urged caution because the science on Zika is not yet proven.)

Maduro recently raised the number of suspected Zika cases from 4,700 to 5,221 with three deaths. Dr Jorge Luis Hernandez-Rojas, of the Chacao Health Agency in Caracas is part of a group of doctors who are close to the opposition. He told Newsnight: "We fear the true number of Zika cases is not 4,000 but 400,000." No-one knows for sure.

…..

The eyes of Hugo Chavez stare down at you from sites across the capital. But what they look down on is a nation gone to seed: grungy high-rise buildings, the concrete crumbling, stray dogs pecking at the rubbish, heavily armed police toting shotguns at checkpoints and traffic jams.

Petrol here is the cheapest in the world - our driver could fill up his tank for pennies - an absurdity that Maduro dare not address lest he trigger riots, like the "Caracazo" chaos in 1989 in which hundreds died.

Financial meltdown, political stalemate: it might not come to it but some people fear this could lead to violence and even a military coup.”