ZCZC
BCN-23
VENEZUELA-CHINA-ECONOMY
Maduro looks to China to bolster Venezuela’s collapsing economy
CARACAS, Sept 13, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro
departed Wednesday for China in search of agreements to bolster the oil-
exporting country’s collapsing economy.
Maduro said the trip was “very necessary, very opportune and full of great
expectations.”
“We are leaving under better conditions, having activated a program of
economic recovery, growth and prosperity. We are going to improve, broaden
and deepen relations with this great world power,” he said in a televised
address.
Maduro’s government has massively devalued the national currency as part
of a raft of measures intended to halt the economy’s free-fall into
hyperinflation.
The International Monetary Fund projects Venezuela’s inflation rate will
reach 1,000,000 percent by the end of the year.
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled the country, most of them
into neighboring Latin American countries.
The trip to China is Maduro’s first outside the country since he was
allegedly targeted by exploding drones at a military parade in Caracas August
4.
Venezuela’s crude oil production meanwhile fell in August to 1,448,000
barrels per day, a drop of 21,000 on the month before according to figures
released by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
The figure represents the lowest level of crude produced in three decades,
excluding a strike that lasted from December 2002 to February 2003.
The volume reported by the government remains the lowest of the last three
decades, excluding the fall recorded by a strike of the sector between
December 2002 and February 2003.
The government attributed the collapse to poor management of state oil
giant PDVSA, which has been caught up in multiple cases of corruption, and to
decreasing investments in infrastructure as a result of falling revenues.
It also blames sanctions by Washington that prevent the oil company from
negotiating new debt in the United States.
BSS/AFP/HR/1000