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Friday, February 23, 2007

Yawn 

It's kind of funny but I hadn't even realized that the final Venezuelan GDP for last year hadn't come out yet. Yet today the poor doomsayers in the Venezuelan opposition got smacked upside the head by them.

Here goes what is by now the very boring routine for Oil Wars regulars:

In the fourth quarter of 2006 Venezuelan GDP grew at an astounding 11.3%. And with that the final growth rate for 2006 was 10.3%. As Austin Powers (a big Chavez fan) would say - YEAH BABY. I love hitting double digits. It sounds so much better than a measely 9 point something percent.

As usual, the private sector leads the way. Private sector GDP grew 14% while the lagging public sector grew only 2.3%.

The non-petroleum sector grew 13.1% while the petroleum sector shrank by 3.7% (OPEC cuts and Orinoco maintanence).

Manufacturing was up 12.4% (damn, those lazy Venezuelans aren't just all living off of oil - they actually are making increasing numbers of things!), commerce was up 22.7%, construction was up 30.5%, communications up 20.9% while government services were up only 3.6%.

So the private and productive sectors of the economy are skyrocketing. Sure wouldn't guess that based on the opposition propoganda.

Any bad news? A little. Non-oil exports fell by 8.5%. That is what a way overvalued currency will do to you. Sooner or later they'll have to devalue the Bolivar and that will take care of that problem.

Anways, sorry for putting everyone to sleep with more boring "Venezuela is booming under Chavez" news.

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