According to RIA NOVOSTI, the construction of the Kalashnikov factory is proceeding according to plan. The factory should be finished and running by 2011. The Venezuelan regime got a loan for over 2.2 billion dollars just to be able to get this factory and buy some other toys for its military honchos.
The Kalashnikov factory is part of the Chavista efforts to consolidate the military regime at all costs. Chavismo knows its leader's popularity is falling. It feels it needs to consolidate its control now. It has increased its efforts to intimidate people, it is preparing to profit from the most shameless gerrymandering for the September elections, it is passing laws to take away the last powers regional governments managed by the opposition...and its efforts to arm all its thugs are going along according to plan. The regime definitely feels it will need those arms:
- Venezuela's industry is collapsing (-11% "growth" last year according to the Central Bank).
- Over half the population is working as street vendors or the like ("informal sector").
-A very fertile sub-tropical country almost twice as big as Spain has to import black beans and beef, milk and most of other food products.
- Venezuelan parents have to spend a worker's monthly salary to buy the books for two children. - Hospitals are understaffed and under-supplied.
This is XXI Century "Socialism".
In Russian
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Juan Vicente Gómez
Venezuela has had many more military dictators than any other country in South America, in spite of the 1958-1998 civic period.
All of them were using the Bolívar cult and personality cult towards themselves to consolidate their grip on power.
Hugo Chávez
A dictator can get to power through elections. History has shown it quite often.
Nunne,
ReplyDeleteI am not sure, I don't follow the exchange rate very often.
It would not surprise me, though.
Inflation is going to be much higher.
Minister for the Economy Giordani, that infamous admirer of North Korea's economy, said some time ago we will have an inflation of 20 to 22%:
http://www.eltiempo.com.ve/noticias/default.asp?id=330950
But we know he and his many colleagues have been underestimating it time after time:
http://desarrollosostenibleparavenezuela.blogspot.com/2010/05/economia-para-tontos.html
And as far as I see, food prices have gone through the roof already, way over that.
The "idea" and the "plan" is certainly scandalous, just as reducing investment on education (and strangling universities -UCV hasn't been paid since 2008!).
ReplyDeleteBut I don't think a government unable to build bicycles (remember that one?) will be able to pull off Kalashnikovs. The nerve-chilling thing is that everybody is armed to the teeth, so this isn't really going to help...
Nunne,
ReplyDeleteReal inflation has been, of course, worse than reported.
I don't remember about interest rates for housing, you may ask Miguel at the Devil's Excrement for that. In any case it is enormously difficult to get credit these days in Venezuela. Construction is down. On top of that prices keep rising as, among other things, the "pseudo-union" mafias are out of control: virtually every place where people are building a "union" man or two come to tell the engineers they have to "hire" someone from them to "keep an eye" or something for a lot of money...else, accidents may happen.
"But then again, who wants to buy a house when the fat man will probably steal it."
No idea. Ask Miguel about the current rate, I am not the economy expert.
Vicente,
For me it is already a huge crime to waste in weapons 2.2 billion dollars, specially as Venezuela is an under-developed country with collapsing infrastructure (yes, Venezuela is underdeveloped, it is not an emerging market or Schwellenland as some Germans say).
I do remember the bike factory farce as well as the farce of so many other factories, but the risk is there.
See: Chávez is paying Belorussian companies to bring not just Belorussian engineers but even workers to build some flats. Those workers are brought to Venezuela because otherwise a Chavista factory would not finish anything.
I don't know about the Kalashnikov factory's workforce, but perhaps Russian workers are there as well at least initially...and it takes just a little bit to "create" destructive things.