Venezuela's shrinking industrial production

Data provided by the Venezuelan National Statistics Institute (INE) at the closure of 1998 -the year before Hugo Chávez first came to power- show that back then 11,117 industrial facilities were in full production, providing jobs for 449,636 workers. By 2007 the number of private companies in industry had dropped to 7,093, employing 345,168 workers. The number of expropriated industries and businesses has increased since 2008, the last year INE published updated figures. The decline in industrial activity has continued to this day, while expropriated or nationalized businesses have such enormous costs and negligible revenue, if any, that they have to be subsidized by the government resulting in significant financial losses. More…