Zuñiga’s recent BBC article was horrible (and never corrected by the BBC). She used it to spread one unsubstantiated whopper after another.
Now she takes to the Washington Post to write
“In a country where inflation is soaring toward 700 percent and the economy shrank 10 percent last year…”
Venezuela’s GDP shrank 5.7% last year. The 10% figure Zuniga cites is a prediction that the IMF made for 2015, and it turned out to be a lousy prediction, but writers like Zuñiga can count on editors letting just about anything stand.
Similarly, the 700% inflation number Zuniga throws out there is an IMF prediction for inflation in 2016. Monthly data gathered by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch – which made vastly better predictions than the IMF last year – reveal that inflation was, as of the end of April, on pace to hit 150% in 2016.
Zuñiga also morbidly insinuates that homicides are driving up the cost of the funerals by writing that “workers take advantage of the situation at the Caracas morgue, which has been overwhelmed as the murder rate has risen”.
Venezuela’s annual death rate is 5.29 deaths rate per 1000 people. That figure captures deaths from all causes. It has only risen by 6% since 2000. That works out to about 158,000 deaths per year given its current population. Even using Zuñiga’s (very likely inflated) figures for homicides, the overwhelming majority of deaths in Venezuela (over 80%) are not from homicides.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate