Edgy, I also looked at those statistics and they seemed to be rather too good to be true.

While they showed almost everything to have got better, non-oil exports were down significantly and even oil exports were only up a fraction, when, considering the huge increase in oil prices over the period, they should have been over the top..

The report didn't state the currency it was calculated in or if it was inflation adjusted. My suspicion is that the values were in Bolivars and not adjusted for inflation, which would produce very rosy increases in the figures for all the internal numbers, but would have hit the export numbers hard, which seems to be what has happened.

As the report was produced by the Venezulan central bank for use by Hugo as election material, I am rather skeptical of the value of the report in determining the real state of financial affairs in Venezuela.