U.N. makes fool of itself rewarding Venezuela

U.N. makes fool of itself rewarding Venezuela
BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com

What a joke! Venezuela, a country facing severe food shortages where
people have to make long lines in hopes of finding milk, flour or
coffee, has just received an award from the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization for its allegedly great success in combating
hunger.

When I first read that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was
describing the FAO award as a historic achievement by his government, my
first reaction was to think that Maduro was making this up.

After all, this is the president who has said he was communicating with
late president Hugo Chavez through a little bird, and who claims that
Venezuela — which has the world's highest inflation rate and Latin
America's worst performing economy — is an economic model for the rest
of the world.

But in a telephone interview with a senior FAO official at the
organization's headquarters in Rome, I learned that the U.N. group had
indeed bestowed the award to Venezuela and to 71 other countries at a
ceremony during the 39th United Nations Conference for Food and
Agriculture held last week in Rome.

Maduro's dubiously-elected populist regime, as well as Argentina's
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, another of the award's
recipients, had a propaganda feast with their FAO prizes. Both
countries' official media virtually neglected to mention that the FAO
also gave awards among others to Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Peru,
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic.

Venezuelans, who have to endure lines for hours at a time in front of
supermarkets to find food, are still bewildered. Ironically, the Maduro
regime itself recognizes that there are major shortages of milk, meat,
chicken, coffee, rice, oil, flour, and other essential goods, which
Maduro blames on an alleged "war" waged by the country's "oligarchs."

In Argentina, pro-government media triumphantly broadcast Fernandez
speech at the FAO ceremony in Rome, where she claimed — contrary to all
evidence —that her government reduced poverty to below 5 percent of the
population.

What's more, her Chief of Staff Anibal Fernandez said shortly thereafter
that Argentina's poverty rate is lower than Germany's. Immediately, many
bewildered Argentines filled social media with jokes, many of them
calling on Argentines to send food, medicines and mattresses to the
supposedly poverty-stricken Germans.

In reality, Argentina's INDEC government statistical office is known to
concoct its figures. According to the Catholic University of Argentina's
Social Debt Observatory, 27 percent of Argentina's population is below
the poverty line. Comparatively, less than 4 percent of the German
population is poor, international economists say.

In addition, because countries measure poverty in different ways,
Germany defines as poor those who have an income of less than $13,164 a
year, while the Argentine government considers poor those who make less
than about $2,258 a year.

It seems that, in its eagerness to make headlines everywhere, the FAO
gave awards to everybody, including to populist countries that — such as
Venezuela and Argentina — make up their economic and social statistics,
and that have misspent their recent all-time commodity bonanzas in
populist fiestas that wrecked their economies.

In a telephone interview from Rome, I asked FAO chief statistician
Pietro Gennari whether the FAO is not being utterly irresponsible by
giving awards to the governments of Venezuela and Argentina.

Gennari responded that the FAO gave these awards taking into account
countries' achievements in the fight against hunger since 2000. In
addition, in the case of Venezuela, many of these awards were given
based on statistics that are up to three years old.

"We base our estimates on data that are provided by the countries, and
by their national statistical authorities," Gennari told me. "These
estimates, as it happens, sometimes are a bit outdated. It's not
possible to take into account the latest developments in each country."

My opinion: Oh, really? You give an award to a government that is
responsible for widespread food shortages, and your excuse is that you
based your information on that country's notoriously unreliable
statistical office? And you accept dubious government statistics that
are often three years old because the country has stopped publishing
them altogether for fear of public ridicule?

The FAO (just like the U.N. Human Rights Council, which counts Cuba,
China and Saudi Arabia among its members) makes it hard to take U.N.
agencies seriously. According to the U.N.'s own statistics, Venezuela is
Latin America's worst performing economy, followed by Argentina.

Giving awards to the Venezuelan and Argentine governments amounts to
rewarding those who make up their statistics, as virtually any
independent economist in Venezuela or Argentina can attest. What the
U.N. agency does is not only irresponsible, it's scandalous: it
validates disastrous governments and encourages other countries to
pursue policies that create more — rather than less — hunger.

Source: U.N. makes fool of itself rewarding Venezuela | Miami Herald
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