This article by Julian Borger on Venezuela’s economy sates that “By IMF figures, it has the world’s worst negative growth rate (-8%), and the worst inflation rate (482%). The unemployment rate is 17% but is expected to climb to near 30% in the coming few years.”
The IMF values that Borger reports are projections for 2016, not confirmed data as he reports.
In October of 2015, the IMF projected that by the end of 2015 (which was then only a few months away) Venezuela’s GDP would contract by 10% and that its unemployment rate would hit 14%. According to the IMF link Borger supplied, the IMF has conceded that those predictions were wildly inaccurate. Venezuela’s GDP contracted by 5.7% and its unemployment averaged 7.4% during 2015.
Bad enough that Borger reports projections for 2016 as confirmed data. His error is more glaring considering how terrible IMF projections have been.
Unlike the IMF, Francisco Rodriguez (formerly of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch) made very accurate projections for Venezuela’s GDP, unemployment and inflation in 2015.
In April of this year, Rodriguez reported that “monthly inflation so far this year [is] at an average of 8.2% mom “. That puts inflation – so far – on pace to hit 150% for the year – way off the IMF’s 482% projection for 2016 that Borger reported without telling readers that it was a projection.
Borger also wrote that “President Nicolas Maduro was bequeathed power by the dying revolutionary strongman, Hugo Chávez.”
Hugo Chavez was Venezuela’s democratically elected president. Referring to him as a “strongman” is a sleazy journalistic tactic used to mislead readers about that extremely important fact. Nicolas Maduro was also democratically elected in April of 2013. Before Chavez died, Chavez urged people to vote for Maduro. That does not mean Maduro was “bequeathed” power by Chavez.
Will the Guardian’s editors be dishonest enough to let Borger’s errors stand?
I hope to be proven wrong, but my guess is that they will let them stand. The Guardian’s coverage was 85% hostile towards the Venezuelan government during years when its economy was booming and poverty was being quickly reduced.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate
1 Comment
Julian Borger perpetuating lies about Syrian use of chemical weapons. Still up to his old tricks.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/27/us-syria-warning-assad-regime-chemical-attack