You may recall that in the final week of September President Chávez suddenly woke up to the "emergency" facing the country's health care sector and the subsequent "too little too late" declaration from Douglas León Natera, the president of the Medical Federation of Venezuela who also pointed out the farcical qualifications many imported Cuban doctors have.
You may also recall our September 30 photo of the day from Antímano, where the Barrio Adentro mission once operated.
Well, now we get the sum of the parts in the latest announcement on the health care front, an eye-popping $5.6 billion (yes, that's a 'b') spent on Cuban staff in 2008. This comes on the heels of an initiative that brings a new group of Cuban doctors to reinforce Barrio Adentro.
Of all of the analysis in this account in El Universal, the passage that most strikes me is the following:
Bilateral trade rose seven percentage points and stood at 27 percent. However, in value terms (in US dollars) the increase amounted to 82 percent. "Cuba exported to Venezuela USD 415 million and Venezuela sold USD 4.47 billion in goods to the island. This shows that we are talking of unidirectional trade," Mesa said. According to the Cuban economist, it is noteworthy that from the total deficit of the island in 2008 (USD 10.56 billion) the accumulated deficit with Venezuela represents 38 percent, which amounts to USD 4.06 billion. "It is evident that Venezuela is subsidizing Cuba's foreign trade. The question we may ask is how does Cuba pay more than USD 4 billion in trade deficit?"
Mesa mentions the USD 5.6 billion disbursed by Chávez's government for Cuban staff. This sum may be a part of the payment of the deficit. The Cuban economist also recalls that "unfortunately, the balance of payments during the years 2007 and 2008 is unaccounted for in Cuba's Statistical Yearbook."
As we have pointed out numerous times before on this blog, irrespective of what one's political ideology is, it's pretty hard to make the argument that either Venezuela or Cuba promote transparent bookkeeping practices. Can someone please explain to me how this attitude helps the survival of a Bolivarian socialist agenda more than it hurts it? For anyone true to the cause, isn't it in everyone's best interest to be able to know and track what things cost to make sure that the revolution doesn't run out of money? Am I missing something here?
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