Paging Hernando de Soto: Venezuela Needs You

Really, that first row says everything. Of 181 countries, Venezuela ranks #174 in terms of how easy it is to do business there. It goes without saying that Venezuela has the worst ranking in this survey of any Latin American country (second place goes to Haiti, ranked globally at 151...ahem, let me repeat that for those still sipping their morning coffee: WORSE THAN HAITI), but what also comes to mind here is the tangible, anecdotal evidence beyond the data. What I'm getting at is a more personal way of putting this into perspective. Now, I have been to Venezuela as a tourist many years ago, and I've been there more recently on business, but I've never lived there on a day to day basis. And those day to day realities are the most indicative of how any of this translates to the average person. But what I do know is this:

In Mexico City, when you join a gym, you have to pay extra to NOT have a personal trainer.

In India, people stand in queues for the sole purpose of selling their spot in the queue to a newcomer to the queue who cannot be bothered to step to the back end of 200 people.

In Brazil, if you are a foreigner attempting to open a business, your business must be at least 50% owned by a Brazilian and must employ a minimum of 8 Brazilians (this one I'm sure varies depending on conditions and has probably changed since I last lived there, which was some years ago).

In Chile, a trip to the pharmacy can involve a flurry of tickets and receipts for something as simple as buying a tube of toothpaste.

In Italy, passport holders must pay an annual 40 euro tax to enable travel outside the EU.

The respective rankings of these countries in the World Bank's Doing Business survey: 56, 122, 125, 40, 65.

These are just off the top of my head. Clearly, they are not the only countries where these sorts of things happen, and clearly the world's most business-friendly countries are not without their hindrances (just think health care). The point here is RELATIVITY. Following is what the bottom 20 of the list looks like :

Worse than Afghanistan.

Very soon I will finally dissect on this blog the World Bank's Governance Indicators report, released earlier this month, and one of the many outputs from that institution that the Chávez administration has derided as alternately "right-wing" and "pitiyanqui" among other epithets. He can say what he likes, and surely none of these globe-spanning reports is perfect, but when a) even the most egregious rounding errors in methodology would not render Venezuela a significantly better outlook and b) Venezuela does not rank as best or near best in any of these reports, not all of which are headquartered in "pitiyanqui" countries, at some point we must digest and appreciate the notion that Venezuela is really joining the bottom ranks of the world's worst countries.

Once again: WORSE THAN HAITI. WORSE THAN AFGHANISTAN.

Stay tuned for more on this topic.