That may be true, but many other countries are weathering the storm of falling oil prices just fine. Venezuela simply doesn't have enough of a free or business friendly economy to allow them to diversify enough. If Maduro came out today and said "all price controls are off, all taxes are cut in half, all business regulations are on hold for 1 year", things would rebound very quickly. It would take awhile to generate food but once that trains starts, to the extent that the government and crime don't interfere with it their people will have no problem finding food.
> Venezuela simply doesn't have enough of a free or business friendly economy to allow them to diversify enough. If Maduro came out today and said "all price controls are off, all taxes are cut in half, all business regulations are on hold for 1 year", things would rebound very quickly.
This is not Venezuela's problem. The problem is that Maduro is trying to control capital flight by fixing the exchange rate. The currency is not free floating and when companies want to buy goods overseas, they have to go to the government and ask permission to exchange their Bolivars to Dollars. This causes two problems, the government is really slow to approve the conversion of Bolivars to Dollars and the exchange rate does not reflect the real world value of Bolivars. Every time someone exchanges Bolivars to Dollars, the government loses a lot of money. The government does not want this to happen so they are not approving a lot of outbound capital. The import business has ground to a halt because of this.
