PETKOFF FINDS A TOUGH AUDIENCE
Roy S. Carson
Today's (Monday) Caracas DAILY JOURNAL:
PETKOFF FINDS A TOUGH AUDIENCE
by Jake Keaveny, Daily Journal Staff
Heralded on Wall Street as the agent of free-market reform, Planning
Minister Teodoro Petkoff is finding it more difficult to win over people on
his own turf than big-time foreign investors.
Petkoff, the flamboyant spokesman for Venezuela's economic reform
program 'Agenda Venezuela' , heard the ills of community leaders Friday but
had little luck in quelling them.
"He is giving us the same responses we are hearing on TV,"said Father
Thomas Mulcahy of the Santa Cruz Paris in the Propatria barrio.
In an event sponsored by the Foreign Journalists' Association (APEX),
Mulcahy and other social workers met with Petkoff at the church.
While the State of an economic turnaround, the estimated 80 percent of
Venezuela living in poverty remain in a perpetual down spiral, said Mulcahy.
Lack of funding for schools, poor health facilities and a frighteningly
high crime rate are the reality for the barrios surrounding Caracas.
"I've been robbed in the middle of the afternoon right outside the
church ... this is the worst I've ever seen things," Mulcahy, who has worked
with Venezuela's poor for 24 years, said.
Running water can stop for up to three months at a time, the social
workers complain.
The closest hospital, Los Magallanes de Catia, is in dire straits for
lack of State funding and the neighborhood's last remaining pharmacy is
about to close shop.
But Petkoff, an ex-communist guerrilla turned economist and politician,
remained staunch that President Rafael Caldera hasn't forgotten the poor.
"The Family Subsidy affects three million, two hundred thousand
families and that's 12 million people," Petkoff said, alluding to the
government's direct subsidy to families with school children.
Austerity measures installed last April to help mend the ailing economy
were coupled with a host of social programs.
A public transportation subsidy has completely offset the five-fold
domestic gasoline increase, affirmed Petkoff. Shock inflation, due to the
lifting of foreign exchange and price controls is being met with the family
subsidy and subsidies on basic foods.
"A full two percent of the Gross Domestic Product is being spent on
social programs," Petkoff reiterated.
"What he's talking about we just don't see up here," said Oswaldo
Borjes, who teaches construction trades to unemployed youth.
High unemployment rates are what topped concerns. Official rates are
between 11-12 percent while unofficial figures top 20 percent.
Community leaders also pressed Petkoff about government spending
priorities.
Non-plussed, Petkoff stuck to his neoliberal guns. Unemployment will
taper off as the economy grows, he responded.
"Real wages, which are at the levels of 1968, will take 10-12 years of
a steady 4-5 percent annual growth to rebuild," said the straight-talking
minister. But, the workers immediate reward from 'Agenda Venezuela' will be
a massive cut in inflation.
Currently the highest in Latin America, inflation is running at 112
percent annually. Under International Monetary Fund (IMF) guided goals it
is to drop to two percent monthly by December.
Petkoff also shed criticism of a $1 billion emergency banking fund.
Eighteen banks collapsed or were taken over by the State in 1994 and 1995,
costing some $10 billion and causing the ongoing recession. Petkoff assured
it wouldn't happen again.
But being burned by corruption too many times "people are wondering
where all of the oil money is going," said 20-year-old Merven Plaza, a
Propatria construction worker that earns 50,000 bolivares ($105) a month.
The community leaders were gracious for the rare chance to question a
minister one-on-one -- but ingrained distrust of the government has the
masses feeling left out in the cold, they warned