“Neither state absolutism nor market fundamentalism. The solution is not in extremes”

[ChangoLoa]

Interview / Víctor Álvarez, ex Minister of Basic Industries and Mining (Venezuela)

"Some parity able to express productivity must be found"
“Neither state absolutism nor market fundamentalism. The solution is not in extremes”

The national government bears plenty of onuses in the economic matter; but one takes precedence over the rest. The so-called 21st Century Socialism expanded oil rent-seeking and has failed to diversify local production.

Based on the numbers supplied by the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), non-oil exports in 2010 shed 18.8 percent versus 1999, whereas manufacturing went from 16 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) the year when Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez took office, to 15 percent last year.

In view of Víctor Álvarez, the former Minister of Basic Industries and Mining, "rent-seeking inertia" dragged by domestic economy has prevails. While he advocates "a new production model" in his research at the Miranda International Center (CIM), "the economic policy should be revised and straightened."

Do you think that the national government is taking that way?

This should be asked to a government official. I mean that in the light of my research; as far as I understand the Venezuelan economy and based on the need to launch again the industrializing proposal as a condition for productive sovereignty, which is much more than food sovereignty, I am proposing some conditions that should be met and the kind of economic policy that should be addressed.

Rest of the interview:
http://english.eluniversal.com/2011/02/14/en_eco_esp_some-parity-able-to_14A5162211.shtml