Thanks to the policies that has implemented the Bolivarian Revolution, extreme poverty in Venezuela continues to decline and during the first half of 2016 it got placed at 4.4%, despite the unconventional war that political and business sectors have been undertaken against the Venezuelan people, said on Monday the Vice President for Planning and Knowledge, Ricardo Menendez.
“It’s a constant descent where we have had in the period associated with economic warfare a constant of decline in overall poverty from 19.6% to 18.3%,” he said while stressing that for the fourth consecutive year is demonstrated a reduction in extreme poverty, which since 2013-2016 has dropped from 5.5% to 4.4%.
The Minister for Planning also explained that structural poverty, measured by unsatisfied basic needs in a population, includes the study of households with children between 7 and 12 years who are not attending schools; households in critical overcrowding; households in inadequate housing; houses without basic services and households with high economic dependence.
“It is extremely important that our country sees it and is a reading at the international level with all scientific rigor, because it is a demonstration of how socialism is able to combat the deep inequalities that capitalism has”, he told in a news conference.
He noted that in the late nineties, structural poverty was at 28.9%, for 2014 it reached 20.4% and it went to 19.1% in 2015. For the first half of 2016, overall structural poverty stood at 18.3%.
During his speech, he stressed that thanks to the social investment by the National Executive, structural indicators have shown better results during the first 17 years of the Bolivarian Revolution.
“Social investment in recent years has reached 71% of total income perceived in the country, but only in the education sector we have had an increase of 679% of income, in comparison to what was done in the fourth Republic”, stressed
Regarding school truancy, he said that it was reduced by almost four times, it went from 2 points in 1998 to 0.6 points in the first half of 2016.
He said that for 1998, there was 15% of households with overcrowding critical condition; and this year it dropped to a 7.9%.
He also referred to the values of households in inadequate housing, which for 1998 were located in at 6.6%, and in 2016 stood at 3.8%.
With regard to housings without basic services, Menéndez recalled that in 1998 this indicator was placed at 15.7% and in the first half of 2016 it stood at 9.2%.
He asserted that households with high economic dependence, which includes working people by household and the people who depend on that income, it was located at 6.2% in 1998 and currently it is at 2.5.
Manenéndez confirmed that the Bolivarian Economic Agenda, promoted by President Nicolas Maduro, aims to safeguard the rights of the Venezuelan people against attacks from right-wing sectors.
“This initiative has helped to protect more than half a million jobs in our country, as well as the purchasing power of our population. It is a vision of fighting the economic war”, he said.
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