President Maduro looks to China to bolster Venezuela’s collapsing economy

CARACAS — Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro departed Wednesday for China in search of agreements to bolster the oilexporting country’s collapsing economy.

Mr. Maduro said the trip was “very necessary, very opportune and full of great expectations.”

“We are leaving under better conditions, having activated a program of economic recovery, growth and prosperity. We are going to improve, broaden and deepen relations with this great world power,” he said in a televised address.

Mr. Maduro’s government has massively devalued the national currency as part of a raft of measures intended to halt the economy’s free fall into hyperinflation.

The International Monetary Fund projects Venezuela’s inflation rate will reach 1,000,000% by the end of the year.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled the country, most of them into neighboring Latin American countries.

The trip to China is Mr. Maduro’s first outside the country since he was allegedly targeted by exploding drones at a military parade in Caracas Aug. 4.

Venezuela’s crude oil production, meanwhile, fell in August to 1,448,000 barrels per day, a drop of 21,000 on the month before according to figures released by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The figure represents the lowest level of crude produced in three decades, excluding a strike that lasted from Dec. 2002 to Feb. 2003.

The government attributed the collapse to poor management of state oil giant PDVSA, which has been caught up in multiple cases of corruption, and to decreasing investments in infrastructure as a result of falling revenues.

It also blames sanctions by Washington that prevent the oil company from negotiating new debt in the US. — AFP