SECTION: BACKGROUND
SOLUTIONS SO FAR
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela or as we
all called Venezuela, is a country that is
made of one mainland and numerous
islands. It is located on the northern coast
of South America. The majority of the
population lives in the northern part of the
country near the coast, especially in
Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela.
Venezuela is well-known for its
petroleum industry, environmental
diversity, and its extraordinary natural
features. Area over half of the country is
suitable for agriculture proposes. Also,
Venezuela is consisted of large area of
jungle.
The current leader of Venezuela is
Maduro Chavez and the country is
under Federal Republic government.
Since the foundation of oil in the early 20th
century, Venezuela has been one of the
worlds leading oil export and even known
as one of the founder of OPEC. Petroleum
industries alone made up 30% of the
countrys GDP, 80% of the exports, and
more than half of the governments
income.
In 1980, the extreme surplus of oil led to
external debts and long-lasting economics
issues. The poverty rate rose to 66% in
1995, inflation rate reached 100% in
1996, and GDP per capita fell over three
times in 1998 from its peak. Even now,
Venezuela had the highest inflation rate
in the world.
In 2000, Venezuela made progress in
social development, specifically in areas
such as health, education, and poverty.
The Millennium Development Goals
started many of the social policies. There
was the total of eight goals that Venezuela
and 188 other nations agreed to in
September 2000. Venezuela was expected
to meet all these goals by 2015.
SECTION: GOVERNMENTS
In 2003, 29.8 % of the populations were
living in extreme poverty. After the
MDG is conducted, the number was
reduced to just 9.4% in 2007 and to 6.8%
in 2011.
Misiones, large social programs, were
applied to deliver basic goods and
services to the parts of the population
that are facing poverty. MDG programs,
economic growth, and these Misiones
policies led to a significant decline in
poverty. Overall poverty decreased from
49% to 24.2% in 11 years starting from
1998.
Mercal network, the organization that is
supported by the government,
constructed over 6,000 facilities serving
foods for people at low price in 2008. In
the present, the number jumped up to
over 16,000 which benefits most of the
population.
Because the policies that eliminated big
estates, converted those 3 million
hectares of their lands for agriculture
purposes, and supported food
producers, in 2010 food production
increased by 44% compared in 1998.
Because the inflation rate is very high,
there were a lot of hoarders who collected
all the goods for their own benefits. The
government tried to fix this by introducing
a policy called Fixing prices of product.
This policy fixed the price of many basic
goods to stay the same. Even so, the
supplies were still inadequate and there
were risks of running out of goods. This
made people arrive supermarket very
early in the morning. The extreme
downside of this policy was there were a
lot of people who bought these goods
and sold it in the black market that cost
100 more times. The policy wasnt so
successful back then.
SECTION: CAUSES & EFFECTS OF MDG
Wars for the ownership of dictatorship in 19th and 20th
centuries resulted in widespread hunger and political
instabilities.

In 1992, there was the coup dtat against the current

president Carlos Andrs Prez, causing him to get
deposed right when he was about to reform politics and
economy. So, his improvement plans were never used.

President Hugo Chvez, whose socialist policies were

praised by the poor, was in fact secretly taking over
democratic institutions. After his unanticipated death by
cancer in 2012, Venezuela was left with severe
bankruptcy.

Venezuela has the world's biggest oil sources. Around

95% of Venezuela's income comes from its exportation of
oil. However, things got truly terrible when oil costs began
to dive from $100 to $48 per barrel because the surplus of
oil supply in 2014.

Venezuela's state-run oil organization, PDVSA, hasn't

paid the organizations that assisted extract its oil, for
example, Schlumberger (SLB). Therefore, those
organizations started to diminish operation with PDVSA.

Poverty causes education problems, because people

cant afford education for their children and lead to
child development issue. Poverty makes children
living in poverty more likely to gain bad health
attitude and mental illness as they grow older.
Youngsters who are poor are usually unable to perform in
social, which will badly impact the child self-esteem and
friendships. This can also lead the child to become more
violence. Children living in a family where the head of the
family are unemployed were most likely to commit crimes.

The inflation rate has not stopped increasing ever since,

and in 2016 President Nicolas Maduro increased the
minimum wage by 40%, causing inflation again since there
were more money in the system and the value of the
money decreased. In addition, Venezuelas financial
resources were very adequate; so the government
printed out insane amount of cash: increasing even
more money into the system. In December, the inflation
rate reached 800%.

Because of inflation rate in 2016, protests started to

thrive and over 70% of the Venezuelans lost an average of
8.7 kilos of weight and around 9.6 million of population
eats only two or fewer meals a day.
SECTION: SUGGESTIONS & SOLUTIONS

The best ways to improve the countrys situation is to

improve infrastructure of the country. By investing money
on infrastructure, the country is more likely to attract
foreign investors. Doing this will then form an ideal loop.
Investors will increase money of the country. Then, the
country will invest those money to improve its infrastructure;
hence, attracting even more investors.

Accessing clean water is another one of the most important

ways to reduce poverty. Not only it can help avoid drinking
dirty water and health problems, it can also help to produce
more agriculture products. To solve water deprivation issue,
the government can install water purifiers around the
north part of the country to filter water from the sea and
provide water to every part of the country.

Because illegal mining and logging intruders are generally

threatening indigenous lands and they make indigenous
people dont have place to live, government need to hire
soldiers to protect those areas. The government also can
adjust the law to include more harsh consequences so the
intruders are more fearful to the law.

Venezuela currently couldnt produce enough food for the

people, and this is one cause that leads the country to
poverty. The country itself should form some kind of self-
sufficient economy like Thailand did. After all,
geographical features of Venezuela promote agriculture.
If the government addresses this suggestion to the citizen,
the poverty can be reduced significantly.

In order to execute all the programs above, the government

needs a decent amount of funds. We can create a program
that borrows money from other foreign countries. Since
current Venezuela status is not so attractive to the
investors, we must fix this by showing them the countrys
well-planned development strategies. Investors will be
interested in this developing country since it contains
limitless potential to grow which will provide investors with
huge returns.

Lastly, for the better overall picture of the country, the

government should assign their people to specific areas in
Venezuela to observe and record data about how things are
going on. We believe that specific parts have common
problem: poverty; however, the causes of the issue are
rarely to be found identical. The thing that we are trying to
fix is the causes of the problems. So, we will send officers to
all around the country to see that which regulations and
solutions should be applied on the specific area.