Venezuela’s Economy Oil, Political Instability, and...

With an economy dominated by the production of oil, Venezuela has enjoyed the highest standard of living in Latin America. In spite of its success in the oil industry, agriculture and manufacturing also play important roles in Venezuela’s economy. With this in mind, it would seem as though Venezuela’s economic state has flourished. Rather, it has suffered from the effects of political influence, corruption, and poor economic management. The distribution of wealth across Venezuela has caused the elite to benefit at the cost of the working people. This is mainly due to the economic and political structure of the country. Even with the plentiful resources Venezuela possesses, it is constantly being threatened by political instability,†¦show more content†¦Compared to other Latin American countries, agriculture has had a much smaller impact on Venezuela’s economy. With the emergence of oil in the early 1900s, the agriculture sector suffered from stead y decline until the 1980s when specific programs where designed to restore agricultural production. As opposed to previous methods of deregulation, extensive government intervention seemed to be the only way to boost overall agricultural production. After the peak of agriculture production in 1989 as demonstrated in Figure 1, new governmental policies caused the continual decline of agriculture. Due to economic priorities, the agricultural sector that once accounted for 22 percent of GDP in the 1930s, now only accounts for barely 1 percent of GDP. Venezuela exports a variety of agricultural products including: corn, coffee, cocoa, sorghum, rice, tobacco, sugarcane, oilseeds, and cotton. In the 1960s, corn surpassed coffee as Venezuela’s leading crop. Despite the production decline of corn in the 1970s, production once again increased in the mid-1980s due to new agricultural policies. Before corn became the leading crop in Venezuela, major cash crops included both cocoa and coffee. These two crops dominated the economy of Venezuela in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries just after Venezuela’s independence from Spain. OverShow MoreRelatedEconomic Development Of The Black Gold2329 Words   |  10 PagesSome countries tend to grow economically quicker than others. Oil discoveries may generate confidence in economic growth at the same time could have undesirable consequences to a democracy. This paper uses data relating to economies that successively discovered oil and have been economically developed amidst the notion that natural resource is a social curse. 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