A true economic genocide has been committed against Venezuela, said President Nicolás Maduro forcefully, during his annual message before the National Assembly, due to illegal sanctions that have been applied to Venezuela by the North American empire since 2015 and that continue to affect the Venezuelan people.
The head of state said this Monday, January 15, that due to the drop in oil production by 87 percent, due to the sanctions, 323 billion dollars have been lost only in oil production, which stopped entering the country. Oil production stood at more than 2.5 million barrels per day in 2015 and fell to 339 thousand in “the very tough” 2020.
“There was no financing anywhere in the world, the doors to acquire oil equipment were closed,” he added, comparing the event to a missile attack on the Venezuelan oil industry, the result of the blockade.
President Maduro also referred to the fact that 22 billion dollars, including 32 tons of gold being held in the United Kingdom, while 40 Conviasa aircraft are still subject to sanctions, adding that even one of them is a “modern and powerful ship” from EMTRASUR. A Boeign 747-300 cargo jet belonging to this state-owned company continues to be grounded by the judicial party in Argentina, which has seized it illegally, violating all the rules of international civil aviation. Venezuela plans to initiate legal actions to recuperate this asset that the United States by controlling the Argentinian judiciary wants to rob the Venezuelan people.
The president reported that more than 150 public and private companies are still subjected to illegal US sanctions.
He noted that there are frozen and blocked bank accounts all over the international financial system, “they are true actions of war, these sanctions that are still in force continue to hit the economy, foreign trade, as well as the mobility of Venezuelans.”
The head of state added that the private sector has also been affected by the blockade and that the total losses of the national economy are estimated at 642 billion dollars (public and private sector), because sales, manufacturing products, and services could not be fulfilled.
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He said that salaries were also depressed due to the impact of the sanctions. “I know that our people, and our working class, even without having this data, are aware of what we have suffered, and have already maintained their unrestricted support for the Bolivarian Revolution.”
President Maduro added that the businessmen also resisted “heroically to keep their companies to a minimum and now to be turning on their engines, for new growth, a new beginning. The country can’t advance without a powerful union between public companies, the government, and private companies. “We have been achieving very high levels of coordination, to move from economic genocide, from resistance to the creation of wealth and prosperity.”
He urged senior officials to take on the task of disseminating the figures of the harm the US and European sanctions have caused, as well as the causes, indicating that the Venezuelan people do not know precisely the damage that has been done at the level of figures.
“Those who asked for the sanctions, those who demanded them, those who justified them, and those who took them are guilty, they are guilty and complicit in this genocide, in this economic massacre that Venezuela suffered from 2015 to the present day,” he said.
(Últimas Noticias) by Aura Torrealba with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/JRE
