No narrative is necessary. Annual financial reports released over the past several weeks have yielded the following data regarding Venezuela which, as a result, has fallen off the list of Top 15 overseas inbound source markets. Some of the numbers and words used to describe the current situation in the country follow.
—$592 million: The amount written off as a 2015 loss by American Airlines as the Venezuelan government has failed to repatriate in fungible currency by not honoring its official currency exchange rate and converting Venezuelan bolivares back into dollars for amounts paid (but not converted) for passenger ticket sales.
—$61 million: The amount of foreign exchange loss reported by United Continental Holdings related to its cash holdings in Venezuela.
—$3.7 billion: The amount owed by (or trapped in) Venezuela to airlines globally as a result of the nation’s currency control system, according to the International Air Transport Association, as reported last summer.
—18 percent: The projected, one-year decline in arrivals from Venezuela to the USA for 2015, once the final figures are collected, according to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office.
—275 percent: The inflation rate in Venezuela in 2015, which was the highest in the world.
—720 percent: The inflation rate that Venezuela is expected to experience in 2016, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
—18 percent: The amount by which Venezuela’s GDP is expected to contract in 2015 and 2016, which would be the third highest in the world, according to the IMF.
—Why and How … in a Graph: “A lack of hard currency has led to scarcity of intermediate goods and to widespread shortages of essential goods—including food—exacting a tragic toll,” says Alejandro Werner, IMF western hemisphere director . “Prices continue to spiral out of control, and we expect inflation to rise to 720 percent this year, from a world-high inflation of about 275% in 2015. In Venezuela, longstanding policy distortions and fiscal imbalances were already having a deleterious effect on the economy before the collapse in oil prices. These problems worsened as falling oil prices triggered an economic crisis, with an expected fall in output of almost 18 percent over 2015 and 2016 (the third sharpest decline in th
