The President of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) Elías Eljuri, highlighted on Wednesday, July 28, that of the $545 billion that Venezuela has received for tax incomes in the last 10 years, $330 billion has been invested by the government in social projects.
After participating in a meeting organized by the National Assembly’s Permanent Commission of Social Development in Caracas, Eljuri said that this amount represents 60 percent of all government revenues over the last decade. During previous administrations, investment stood at 36.6 percent, said Eljuri.
“The policies developed by the Venezuelan government, including all the social programs, such as food, health, among others programs, have contributed to improve the quality of life of the Venezuelan population,”, he said.
Venezuela, regarding the Millennium Development Goals, has already achieved several goals which are presented in a preliminary report. Extreme poverty dropped from 24 percent in 1990 to 7.7 percent in 2009.
Regarding reduction of hunger, Eljuri said that Venezuela almost achieved the goal, falling from 7.6 to 3.7 percent. In this case, he explained that the global indicator considered by the INE was the weight of children under five-years-old.
Regarding primary education, he said that the goal has been accomplished, with 84 percent of children finishing primary school. Nevertheless, the goal has not been completely achieved. More efforts will be developed to achieve it before 2015.
Furthermore, Eljuri said that there are important advances in primary, secondary and university education, since there was an decrease in school desertion due to the educational and food programs implemented by the Venezuelan government. In Venezuela all public schools have food programs which contribute to improve the performance of the students.
Gender Equality, Health
Regarding gender equality, the president of the INE added that this goal was accomplished by Venezuela. In the case of university education the goal was overachieved, since the number of women studying in universities is higher than that of men.
Concerning health care, Eljuri said that the mortality rate dropped by 13.8 percent, a figure that in 1990 stood at 25 percent. He pointed out that the goal is to reduce it to 8.6 percent before 2015.
Nevertheless, the under-five mortality rate has been reduced from 31 percent to 16 percent, and is expected to reach 10.5 percent.
Another of the goals in which Venezuela has shown important advances is technology. Regarding the use of Internet, the country was able to increase users from 20,000 to more than 2 million.
Unemployment has been decreased in the last 10 years from 15 percent to 8 percent, and will drop by around 7 percent by the end of the year, Eljuri added.
RNV/ Press and Communications Office of the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the U.S. / July 29, 2010
