Venezuela in Tatters
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Economic depression, 13,000% inflation, oil seizures by creditors, international sanctions, a refugee crisis - can the Maduro government hold on to power at elections this weekend as Venezuela implodes?
We hear the views of Chavistas on the streets of Caracas, and of refugees on the Brazilian border. Back in the studio, Ed Butler speaks to Maduro critic and former government minister Professor Ricardo Hausman, of Harvard University.
Plus oil analyst Amrita Sen explains why an old legal dispute with ConocoPhillips has come to a head at the worst possible time for the government, and former Obama administration official Adam M Smith discusses the pros and cons of economic sanctions.
(Picture: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro surrounded by tiikertape during a campaign rally in Caracas; Credit: Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:08.9 | Coming up, is this just about the world's most dysfunctional economy? |
| 0:13.3 | The economy is now in the biggest depression that the Western Hemisphere has ever known. |
| 0:19.8 | Venezuela's catastrophe is accompanied by 13,000 percent inflation. |
| 0:24.7 | Yes, ahead of elections, we're looking at Venezuela today, |
| 0:27.7 | the economic efforts by foreign powers to force the president there to stand down. |
| 0:33.4 | If the sanctions go too strong and the country effectively implodes, |
| 0:36.8 | not only this massive refugee crisis, |
| 0:38.9 | but it really could impact allies of the United States, including Colombia next door, |
| 0:42.4 | which is already hosting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan refugees, Brazil to the south. |
| 0:46.6 | What next for Venezuela? That's Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:53.6 | Venezuela's economy is in freefall at the moment. |
| 0:57.3 | Inflation is measured in the thousands of percentage points. |
| 1:01.1 | Food shortages are rife and disease in the country is spreading alarmingly, |
| 1:06.2 | with the collapse of once envied healthcare services. |
| 1:09.4 | Ordinary citizens are fleeing abroad by the hundreds of |
| 1:12.4 | thousands. These are two among the crowds now camped out on the Brazilian side of the border |
| 1:18.1 | at a place called Pakarayima. |
| 1:23.0 | It was very difficult in Venezuela. We went hungry most of the time. I've got an eight-year-old son. He's back in Venezuela. I had to emigrate. I left him with my mother and came here to work. It's not good here either. There's not a lot of work around. There are too many Venezuelans here already. I haven't been able to send money back because |
| 1:45.2 | the situation here is so dire. I came here to look for work opportunities because any possibility |
| 1:51.3 | of finding work in Venezuela has just died. I'm a kitchen assistant. We only earned the minimum wage, but it wasn't enough for anything. |
| 2:03.4 | Like everyone else, I'm here out of necessity. |
... |
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