Economy

Just In: The IMF Censures Venezuela for Not Providing Economic Data

Chavismo blatantly disregarded the constitution when it failed to provide economic data to Venezuelans and to the IMF. They had been warned and, as always, they didn’t care.

Anabella Abadi M.
Photo: Blockchain News

So, the IMF just issued a “declaration of censure” against Venezuela, because it failed to provide economic data (you know, stuff the Venezuelan Constitution clearly states the government must do). This comes in the hopes that Venezuela implements remedial measures in the next six months.

Back in November, Reuters reported that the IMF could issue a declaration of censure under Article VIII, Section 5 (of the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund) if Venezuela didn’t provide information “necessary for the Fund to discharge its duties effectively.” In other words: the IMF showed Venezuela a yellow card on transparency.

We don’t have much hope for the BCV or INE to catch up on all they owe us, but this administration now faces actual costs for hiding data. To give you context, when the IMF did this against Argentina in February 2013, The Economist reported that if that country didn’t comply with the Fund’s rules, Argentina could lose its ability to borrow from the IMF and it could be barred from voting on all policies.

The Maduro government could ignore this declaration and move on, since chavismo has been openly critical of the IMF, but such declarations are issued against the country and not Maduro and his combo. So, even if Maduro says this “declaration of censure” is yet another attack from la derecha imperial, an eventual opposition-led regime would face the consequences of not taking this seriously today.

Our rights are our rights — and we have a right to this data.

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Update: A previous version of the headline stated “Just In: The IMF Censors Venezuela for Not Providing Economic Data”. It was adjusted to properly reflect the ideas portrayed in the post.

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