We are, like every year since 1998, on election time and so the government has declared that it is selling socialist cars!
Yes! We have "socialist" cars. Most of them are red, but you also find some white and grey cars. They are Volkswagen (or Wolksvagen, as the site says) assembled by the Argentinians or refurnished French cars (Turpial and others) assembled by the Iranians. As the government propaganda site says, the government is selling those "socialist cars" for up to 50% of the current market price in Venezuela. The new cars costs "only" 63000 Bolívares, which is around € 20501 at official exchange rates, so you do the maths to find out what Venezuela's prices are right now. Mind: a school teacher in Venezuela earns less than €500 a month.
Last year Venezuela's GDP fell by over 2.5%. Oil exports went down a lot and non-oil exports, which are just a tiny source of Venezuela's income, fell even further.
If you speak Spanish you can go through the comments of chavistas in that governmental site. You will find a lot of what is wrong with Venezuela: cargo cult mentality, pseudo-ideologies based on a complete ignorance of economics, history and geopolitics, parasite behaviour nurtured by so many decades of petrodollars without quality education for the people, an economy that is driven by killing all our golden chickens.
€18529 now, after Hugo announced the devaluation. It will be interesting to know what exchange rate exporters will get. Quico says it is 2.6, which would be a disaster for them. Let's see.
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