Communist Cuba heads the list of the "Poverty Index in Latin America" recently published by DatoWorld, with an estimated 72% of its population living below the poverty line.
The island, which has governed by the Castro communist regime since 1959, far surpasses the rest of the countries located in the top five in the indicator: Venezuela (50.5%), Honduras (48%), Mexico (41%) and Colombia (39.3%).
Chile, with 10.5% of its population below the poverty line, and Uruguay (9.1%), are the nations with the fewest people in a precarious situation, according to DatoWorld, a page dedicated to electoral monitoring in the world and political statistics and economy, with more than 135 thousand subscribers on Twitter.
DatoWorld used a report released in October 2022 by the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH).
The Havana regime does not publish poverty figures or allow scrutiny by international organizations such as the World Bank, which until the fall of 2022 used the daily income measure of U.S. $1.90 to determine the poverty line, the value is the one used for the statistical approximation of the OCDH.
According to the fifth report on the state of social rights in Cuba, more than 72% of the island's inhabitants live below the poverty line and only 14% expect their personal situation to improve in the near future.
The OCDH investigation, which included 1,227 personal interviews conducted in 59 municipalities in the country, confirmed the growing deterioration of social rights due to the accumulated structural crises and the lack of political will of the authorities to make changes.
For 64% of Cubans, the food crisis continues to be the main problem, followed by the so-called "Ordering Iniciative" and inflation. In addition, the perception of the satagnation of development that constitutes the political and government system increased.
On the other hand, this week it was revealed that the Cuban peso (CUP) continues to be among the most depreciated currencies in the world against the U.S. dollar (USD), according to a list published by Steve H. Hanke, Professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore.
"Since January 2022, the Cuban peso has lost 61% of its value against the USD," said the expert on his official Twitter account when disclosing the latest update to his "Currency Watch List."
“Cuba ranks fourth (…) this week. The communist regime has destroyed the value of the Cuban peso,” Professor Hanke added.
According to the expert, Cuba's national currency is only surpassed in depreciation by the Zimbabwean dollar in first place, the Venezuelan bolivar and the Lebanese pound, in that order.
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