Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your passionate testimony. I'm sorry for the instability and hardship that Venezuela is facing right now.
I want to turn to the economic crisis. I know that back in the 1980s and 1990s, Venezuela was a developing country. However, as of January, the International Monetary Fund reported that Venezuela's GDP has contracted 12%. The IMF predicts that Venezuela is on the path to hyperinflation.
I was away on a trip to South Africa, and we went to Zimbabwe and Botswana, and you can see the difference between the two countries. Zimbabwe is very rich with minerals and diamonds. Unfortunately, because of mismanagement and corruption, none of that money is going back to building infrastructure and developing the country. However, Botswana has the same kind of circumstance right next door, but a lot of the money is going to infrastructure and they are developing very rapidly.
My question is about the economic crisis in Venezuela. How do you see this mismanagement coming to such a drastic measure as it is right now, declining so rapidly?