Nearly 3 million Venezuelans could go a day without eating in 2023, according to Anchovy survey

According to the results of the Living Conditions Survey (NCOVI) released this Wednesday by the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), almost 3 million Venezuelans will spend an entire day without eating in 2023 due to not being able to afford food. The study was conducted in 10 out of 24 regions of the country.

The report shows that, in 2023, 12.2% of those surveyed – in a country with about 30 million inhabitants – responded to having gone “a whole day without eating”, an indicator that reached “34.3% in 2020”, which shows that food security “has improved”, commented researcher Luis Pedro España during the presentation of the study.

Although 82% of those interviewed said they felt “worry about running out of food”, which is the mildest indicator of food insecurity, only 45.8% actually ran out of food on some occasion due to the crisis. .

ENCOVI 2023 presentation by Laptila on Scribd

Similarly, one third of the population in 2023 “stopped eating” or “felt hungry but did not eat”, also due to factors such as high food prices and inability to access them due to low incomes.

“There are still regional and regional areas, reaching almost a third of the country, where moderate and severe food insecurity exists,” the article says.

According to the survey, 83.1% of Venezuelan families receive subsidized food boxes distributed by Chavismo, most of them monthly or bimonthly, while some families receive this aid sporadically.

These results come a day after Nicolás Maduro reported that, last year, 6% of the population suffered nutritional deficiency, an index that – he assured – has decreased by 29 points since 2017, when The country had reached a peak of 35%. ,

In February, the UN Special Envoy on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, assured at the end of a visit to Venezuela that real dollarization, low incomes and high inflation – which tipped at 189.8% in 2023 – “will weaken purchasing power. People are at increased risk of suffering from food insecurity, which is why he advocated for the complete removal of restrictions that exacerbate these deficiencies.

With information from EFE