Venezuela «as viewed from aside»
July 26, 2005
Magazine «Fortune» published its rating of 500 most significant companies in the world. “PDVSA” (state petroleum company of Venezuela), rated #73 in the previous list, lost its place and was totally lost from the list! Following the will of experts the Venezuelan company skipped 427 points and disappeared! Can you believe that this nonsense was the result of statistic calculations of oil production and profits of the company? Almost at the same time another magazine - «America Economia» - published its list of 500 biggest companies of Latin America. In this list “PDVSA” was rated #2 after state petroleum company of Mexico and ahead of the Brazilian one.
Some time ago «Cepal» (Centre for Latin American economic studies under the auspices of the UN with headquarters in Santiago-de-Chile) gave publicity to its analytic report, according to which Venezuela turned out to be amongst the poorest countries with stagnant social sphere. As if there was no powerful campaign to fight illiteracy in Venezuela! As if there were no program «Barrio Adentro» - when outpatient medical centers, established with the help of Cuban doctors, appeared in the poorest areas and thousands, if not millions, of people were able to visit a doctor for the first time! And what about the chain of state shops «Mercal» with affordable prices?! Venezuelan government had to depute a delegation to Chile, which, backed by the documents in hands, proved to specialists in economy form the UN, that they, to put it mildly, are very much mistaken. The same days, the World bank issued its own rating in which the Venezuelan economy leaped from 53rd to the 38th place! In this list there are only three Latin American countries ahead of Venezuela – Mexico, Brazil and Argentine, at that, the latter occupies the 35th place.
Concluding his meditations the journalist puts a rhetoric question to his readers: Which of these news were reflected in westernized mass media, and which were just casually mentioned or passed over in silence?