Overall, the budget item amounts to just over 11.565 million dollars, which are to be distributed primarily to health and social security (23 percent), education (20 percent), homeland security (15 percent), social development (6 percent) and productive infrastructure (four percent) and others.
As Executive Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez said when presenting the bill to the National Assembly (Parliament), most of the funds will be dedicated to restoring capacity in the interests of the population and strengthening the production, procurement and distribution of food.
Also to strengthen the Great Housing Mission Venezuela, which reached four million 300 thousand this year, a five million plan, the public education system, the health system and social security.
A non-numerical fact that indicates where the funds are going is that the 2023 budget is embedded in a new phase of transition to socialism, a year that Rodríguez says should be the year of consolidation of increasingly participatory methods of government.
Also Minister for Economy and Planning explained that the new tax law should serve as a revitalization for the economy, through public procurement policies to boost national production and guarantee markets for the production of local councils, entrepreneurs and other actors.
The President of the Permanent Commission for Economy, Finance and National Development of Parliament, Jesús Faría, stressed that what was approved the day before is in line with Simón Bolívar’s historic project and represents an absolutely essential tool for the development of the country .
Faría stressed that the budget item is subordinate to the major interests of working people, it responds to the country’s major needs and the challenges that are hindering development and that we are tackling, he said.
He commented that oil revenues had dropped significantly over the past five years due to the blockade and unilateral sanctions against the country, noting that only $1 billion flowed from this concept in 2022, while before that, ordinary revenues had dropped to 40 amounted to billions.
Referring to this strategic resource, which has been the backbone of Venezuela’s economy for more than a century, Rodríguez reported that the country lost 3,995 million barrels of oil, equivalent to $232 billion, between 2015 and last October.
To these losses must be added the economic blockade and the 927 unilateral coercive measures imposed on the country in recent years and still in force, which have led to the impoverishment of the economy and its social consequences.
For this reason, as the Vice-President explained, we face a budget designed in a locked economy but aligned with social investments to address the inequalities and social wounds caused by punitive measures.
There is still work to be done and progress to be made, as President Nicolás Maduro acknowledges, but there are already economic outlooks that point to rosy prospects, such as the fact that 2022 grew at double digits for four consecutive quarters and foreign currency earnings exceeded four have billions of dollars.
jha/jcd