BCV finally releases November inflation figures

/ December 30, 2013

793px-Banco_Central_de_Venezuela_logo_2-647x489After more of twenty days of delay, the Central Bank has released the inflation figures for November: It was 4,8%.

The BCV has also released its estimate number for the current month: 2,2%

The official excuse used to justify the long delay was because of “…the historical and exceptional recent government measures…” forcing both the Central Bank and the National Statistics Institute (INE) to do more exhaustive measurings.

Here’s the press release by the BCV, titled “Price formation dynamics in the economical and political situation of the year 2013: economic war and government counteroffensive”.

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39 thoughts on “BCV finally releases November inflation figures”

  1. Bullshit !! they waited until they had concocted the lower inflation figures for this month so as to draw attention away from the november figures .Of course forcibly reducing prices through threats and sanctions isnt going to help the shortages figure for the next quarter .

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  2. Some of the nuggets in the Central Bank’s report:

    “La enfermedad y el fallecimiento de nuestro líder, Comandante Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, fueron aprovechados por ciertos sectores de la oposición política, y algunos empresarios, para agudizar artificialmente el deterioro de las variables económicas.”

    “en la forma de una auténtica guerra económica en perjuicio del pueblo venezolano, con impactos significativos en los principales bienes y servicios de mayor consumo.”

    and so on…

    RIP BCV’s reputation.

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  3. Well I think their reputation was caput the day they started buying less than B+ bonds…plus the other disasters, So pretty the economic war! is there a paragraph dedicated to CIA?

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  4. I think it’s sad that some people continue to think the “technical” corps at the BCV have no responsability in this. I mean, do these people not believe in anything? Where is the mass exodus from what is now, clearly, a political party?

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  6. Red and Expert

    Mao Tse-tung, 1958:

    “Ideological and political work is the guarantee for the accomplishment of our economic and technological work; it serves the economic basis. Ideology and politics are the commanders, the soul. A slight relaxation in our ideological and political work will lead our economic and technological work astray.

    Political workers must have some knowledge of business. It may be difficult for them to have a lot, but it may not do for them to have only a little. They must have some. To have no practical knowledge is to be pseudo-red, empty-headedly political. Politics and technology must be combined together. “

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  7. Just a brief glace at this totally political document where they present graphs to show that they aren’t reponsible for anything. It’s all the other guy’s fault.

    It’s just a collection of lies & misleading “facts”” to prove their point.

    Inflation this year is above 100%.
    That comes from someone who tracks prices & lives here.

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  8. I liked best some quotes after “…the historical and exceptional recent government measures…”

    Like when they admit they chose the (tampered) sample that resulted in a lower index.
    “[…]. Se realizaron revisiones de los datos recolectados e inclusive volvieron a visitarse los establecimientos intervenidos con el objetivo de corroborar los resultados y validar los análisis. […]” (emphasis mine)

    Or when they just seem to forget 2013 saw 2 devaluations in the official exchange rate: a direct one setting the CADIVI dollar from VEF 4.30 to VEF 6.30 in february (46% increase), and an indirect one shifting some transactions to the SICAD dollar at VEF 10-12 (132%+ increase from 4.30).
    “De igual manera, sobre el año en su conjunto, la variación anual de 2013 se hubiera podido ubicar en un rango entre 18% y 22%, manteniendo la estabilidad de 2012″ (emphasis mine)

    I also loved when they assert that price reductions where deemed positive by 7 out of 10 people in general, and by 55% of businesspeople.

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  10. Not so OT: MUD press release comes to the rescue with some inspiring (not!) solutions:
    * Raise oil production
    * Lower inflation
    * Increase national production
    * Protect the 3 million Venezuelans in extreme poverty
    * Unify foreign exchange rates
    * Stabilize the bolivar and incentivize non-oil exports
    * Apply a national infrastructure plan

    http://www.elmundo.com.ve/noticias/economia/politica/mud–el-modelo-economico-del-gobierno-esta-haciend.aspx

    Could they be any less specific? The only thing they propose that differs from the chavernment’s official goals is unifying the exchange rate, (and maybe the number of people in extreme poverty).

    Sight.

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  11. BCV will never again give the public real economic figures. As we know, this is for political reasons and a huge sense of survival these guys have. Economic figures have become a state strategic secret. So, may I ask, what good is to be an economist these days in Venezuela? Might as well read smoke from a cigar, or coffee, play the roulette or consult a vodoo magician in order to give economic advise. You might as well become an interpreter of whatever the regime says and does instead of analyzing the BCV’s report. I wonder if conventional and local Venezuelan economists realize this?

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    • I think this represents a good opportunity for private economists. Think – now Asdrúbal Oliveros, Luis V León, Obuchi and co. can go out and calculate the IPC the way it was meant to be calculated! That’s what they do in Argentina. If Mohammed does not go to the mountain …

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  12. With this new show of BCV subservience to the Regime ( now proclaimed official beautician of the regimes much battered economic image) , a new breed of economist will be born who work with the bits and pieces of information that they can gather from ocassional regime statements to construe a conjectural vision of what is really happening , much like the old discipline of kremlinology during soviet union days.

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  13. It is indeed a great opportunity for Venez economists. But given “la guerra economica” how long will they last in Venez without becoming casualties of the said guerra? I sadly remember in 2010 that casas de bolsa had secretly become targets of the “guerra”. We paid dearly. About 18 colleagues were unjustly imprisoned and accused of whatever. Practically all of those businesses were closed or shut down….Given the strategic importance of economic opinions and “real” economic data do you believe economists will go on unscathed? Giving their advice in a business as usual setting? Will they be courageous enough to publicly challenge the regime’s data and (mis)information?……Maybe “thinking outside the box” is their best course of action, or not?…….doing what they have been doing until now may not last long. As a professional group I sadly believe that they will from now on be in danger if they stay in Venez.

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    • This is a case where there is readily available data to refute the troll, courtesy of World Development Indicators Databank (World Bank) . IIRC, the troll was referring to CIA World Factbook data on GNP in current dollars to show how well Chavenomics had done for Venezuela. As estimates of GDP in current dollars are subject to exchange rate/funny money distortions, this is a fool’s errand. When there is a 10:1 or so spread between official and black market exchange rate, such estimates are very problematic, as you well know. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or an economics professor to figure that out.

      As an economist, you know much better than I that when put into purchasing power parity, as in GNI per capita, PPP (constant 2005 international $), the funny money distortions of the exchange rate can be greatly reduced, if not entirely eliminated. Comparing Venezuela to Latin America, from 1998 to 2012:

      GNI per capita, PPP (constant 2005 international $), percent increase:
      Latin America & Caribbean (all income levels): 27.7 % increase
      Venezuela, RB 13.2 % increase.

      As Venezuela has had the oil price bonanza increase from $10/BBL in 1998 to ~$90-100/BBL in recent years, a bonanza which most of the rest of Latin America has not benefited from, Venezuela’s lagging behind the rest of Latin America is even more telling. [not the first time I have replied to the troll praising Chavenomics with this data.]

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    • At one time I could readily find GNP figures in constant Bs from the BCV website. This time I could not. Is this an indication of poor web-searching on my part, or has the BCV made this data much more inaccessible- or completely inaccessible?

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      • I haven’t checked that data but I did check some other on trade and it was amazingly hard to get it, more than ever…and what is available. Other nations analyzing Venezuela’s trade state in their reports they got most of the data from analyzing everyone else’s reporting on their trade with Venezuela.

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  16. Can some of you help also in Wikipedia Spanish for the economy part?
    Actually plotting some of the data as our gringo from Texas did is a brilliant idea, putting that as a png in Economía de Venezuela or so would be an eye popper for some gullible out there.

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  21. OT: Enrique Tejera City Hospital Maternity in Valencia has been renamed Children Maternity Hospital Supreme Commander Hugo Chavez.

    http://www.el-carabobeno.com/portada/articulo/73153/maternidad-de-la-chet-con-nuevo-nombre-comandante-supremo-hugo-chvez

    Because that was a more pressing matter than fixing the lack of running water, medical supplies and personnel.

    We are living in a country where things can only be named after Chavez, Bolivar, Miranda, Sucre, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara…

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    • Really a shame. As a Valenciano I puke on Chavismo. Valencia has only one bloody general public hospital: the one where I was born during the IV Republic.
      Chavismo hasn’t created one in spite of having several times the money Venezuela got in the 14 years prior to 1999.
      And now all they can do is change the name of a hospital from that of a scientist to that of a psychopath milico.

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  22. Cant understand how it was so difficult for the BCV to calculate the nov inflation figures that it took them 20 extra days to accomplish the task, while calculating the still unfinished dec figures was so easy that they could issue them before the month was over . Am also baffled at the incongruity in the brutal and inexplicable fall in inflation from 4.8% to 2.2% . My own guess is that when they saw they nov figures , they realized that their publication was so damaging that they had to call in a spin doctor from the regimes central skunk works to redo them . The language is so different from the ordinary language used by the BCV that you can tell they brought in someone from the outside (not much versed in the language of profesional economists) , to concoct a message which mixed the 4.8% figure ( probably shaving a few points off) with the totally imaginary 2.2% dec estimate and added some gaudy rethorical embellishments to make it sound like the govt deserved fullsome praise for doing a great job at handling the economy. Truth of course is here the victim of the regimes obsession with always presenting itself in a sanctimonious and epically heroic image ,one that no one but themselves can pretend to believe and which most of their primitive minded followers simply ignore. We now live officially in a make believe world , in a prince Potemkin Village which inhabitants are enjoined to see things through the zany pink coloured lens the govts propaganda machine manufactures .

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