Ricardo Menéndez: Venezuela is making progress on the Sustainable Development Goals despite sanctions

Published at: 25/09/2026 08:03 PM

The sectoral vice-president of Planning, Ricardo Menéndez, said that Venezuela is making progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, despite the international financial siege.

This was stated during the course “Plan for the Homeland of the Seven Transformations (7T) and Sustainable Development Goals”, in Caracas, he reported on his Instagram account of the Ministry of People's Power of Planning.

In this regard, he emphasized that “Venezuela is able to advance the Sustainable Development Goals, which have to do with the vision of development, despite a war against the country, despite the blockade because it has a development plan and because there is a revolution in Venezuela.”

Menéndez referred to the national statistical system as a robust and effective structure in measuring the scope of public policies, oriented towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

He explained that Venezuela has a geographical statistical system, “of profound strength” with statistical operations and concrete measurement instruments that allow us to evaluate compliance with social programs and to move towards global goals.

He also detailed the scope of the new structure of the State in territorial organization and participatory democracy. “When we talk about the People's Power consultation, we're talking about the scale of the commune, (...) about the constitution of a state, where the commune is part of the state at all levels,” he said.

Menéndez also reflected on international indicators and global evaluation methods of the United Nations measurement and statistics system, which, as he said, “has not yet been able to resolve how an important part of these SDGs are going to be measured.”

He warned of ideological positions that attempt to distort the social and economic advances achieved in the country and warned of “the vision of NGOs where they simply intend to sweeten development processes”.