In September 2012, Reuters news agency published a special report into a state corporation, Fonden, that now accounts for one-third of all investment in Venezuela.
It found a string of abandoned or half-built facilities, including a paper factory, an aluminium mill and a fleet of unused buses - all of which apparently received money from Fonden.
Fonden has absorbed $100bn of Venezuela's oil revenues since it was founded in 2005.
At the end of January, the government cut PDVSA's contribution to Fonden by 19%, a move which seems to presage a round of public spending cuts. But until the post-Chavez political landscape is clearly established, the president's successors can hardly afford to alienate the people with austerity programmes.
The housing drive fuelled big increases in public spending - and big expectations among those yet to be housed under the programme.
According to Bank of America-Merrill Lynch,
government expenditure rose 30% in real terms as a result over the 12 months leading up to the election.
But all that largesse took its toll on the public finances. Capital Economics, a research company,
estimates that Venezuela's fiscal deficit widened to 9% of GDP in 2012, while Morgan Stanley reckons it could have reached 12% by now.
High inflation, still nudging 20% a year, doesn't help either.
As survey organisation Consensus Economics says: "
Soaring inflation and government spending - coupled with currency and capital controls - have created a widening fiscal deficit.
"The authorities are increasingly reliant on external debt to finance this."
For "external debt", read loans from China. According to Bloomberg news agency, the state-run China Development Bank has lent Venezuela $42.5bn over a five-year period.
Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said in September 2012 that of the 640,000 barrels of oil a day that Venezuela exports to China, 200,000 went towards servicing the country's debt to Beijing.
Unless PDVSA's underperformance can be remedied, those debts will remain and will probably grow as the country's gap between spending and income widens.
It certainly doesn't seem hard to uncover evidence of waste in government expenditure during the Chavez years.
But the overspending doesn't stop at home. In an effort to spread the influence of his Bolivarian revolution,
Mr Chavez allowed Cuba and other countries in the region to benefit from cheap deals and soft loans under the Alba and Petrocaribe programmes.
The next administration will have to decide whether or not to continue funding that extensive network of petro-diplomacy.....snip~
BBC News - Hugo Chavez leaves Venezuela in economic muddle
Note the gap in spending is ever widening with that of income. Chavez was Never was to much of a business man. Hows that wealth distribution looking now? :lol:
Government spending that is Unsustainable.....pretty much says it all.