FILE – In this June 10, 2021 file photo, a volunteer carries containers with rice, chicken and salad for residents at the San Antonio de Padua soup kitchen in the Petare neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, amid the new coronavirus pandemic. A 2019 report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization found that roughly a third of Venezuelans reported they had no food stored up and 11 percent reported sometimes going a day without food. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

Girls watch an event for children at a soup kitchen in the Antimano neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, July 27,2021. The soup kitchen was celebrating a belated national children’s day with different cultural activities, amid the new coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

A man counts Bolivar bills that amount to $1, at a bus stop in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021. Venezuela says it will make a million-to-1 change in its currency soon, eliminating six zeros from the local currency as hyperinflation continues to plague the troubled South American nation. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

A shelf is full of corn and rice flour at supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, June 4, 2021. Two years ago Venezuela stopped restricting transactions in dollars which has largely ended shortages that for years left markets with chronically empty shelves, but has meant many Venezuelans who are paid in bolivars can’t afford what’s on those shelves. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

FILE – In this April 10, 2021 file photo, residents help unload bags of basic food staples, such as pasta, sugar, flour and kitchen oil, provided by a government food assistance program called CLAP, or Local Committees of Supply and Production, in the Santa Rosalia neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela. Despite repeated multiplications of the official minimum wage earned by millions of Venezuelans, it still amounts to about $2, not enough to buy a kilogram of chicken. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

A shopper checks out at a supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, June 4, 2021. Two years ago Venezuela stopped restricting transactions in dollars, which has largely ended shortages but has meant many Venezuelans who are paid in bolivars can’t afford what’s on those shelves. ( AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

A woman shops at a supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, June 4, 2021. Two years ago Venezuela stopped restricting transactions in dollars, which has largely ended shortages but has meant many Venezuelans, who are paid in bolivars, can’t afford what’s on those shelves. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

FILE – In this April 28, 2021 file photo, people stand in line outside a soup kitchen at the San Miguel Arcangel church in Caracas, Venezuela. A 2019 report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization found that roughly a third of Venezuelans reported they had no food stored up and 11 percent reported sometimes going a day without food. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

A woman checks out at a supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, June 4, 2021. Two years ago Venezuela stopped restricting transactions in dollars, which has largely ended shortages but has meant many Venezuelans who are paid in bolivars can’t afford what’s on those shelves. ( AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

A woman looks through a window during an event for kids at a soup kitchen in the neighborhood of Antimano in Caracas, Venezuela,Tuesday, July 27, 2021. The soup kitchen was celebrating a belated national children’s a day with different cultural activities, amid the new coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Yosmar Sanguino says she struggles to put food on the table for her two daughters and three grandchildren in a low-income neighborhood of Venezuela’s capital.

She often whips up arepas — traditional flat, round corn patties — with butter and cheese. But it’s hard to afford even those few ingredients.

“There is food, but the money is lacking. Because if you buy one thing, you can’t buy the other,” she said. “If you buy butter, you can’t buy cheese. Or if you buy the cheese, you can’t buy the butter.”

And she’s among the relatively fortunate Venezuelans who have at least some access to dollars — money sent by a son who emigrated to the United States as the the South American nation’s social, political and economic crises worsened.

More than 40% of Venezuelan households receive some remittances from abroad, which last year were expected to reach $4 billion, according to the consultancy firm Econoanalitica, based in Caracas, the capital. The money often flows through a network of third-party foreign bank account holders who charge commissions, digital payment methods such as Zelle or via friends or relatives travelling home with cash.

The country’s socialist government two years ago gave up its long and complicated efforts to restrict transactions in dollars in favor of the local bolivar, whose value has been obliterated by the world’s worst inflation.

That has largely ended shortages that for years left markets with chronically empty shelves. But it means many Venezuelans — paid in bolivars whose value evaporates by the day — can’t afford what’s on those shelves.

The government last week announced it would lop six zeros off the currency — a million-to-1 change — with new bills as of Oct. 1. Currently, the 1 million bolivar note is the largest denomination. It’s worth roughly a U.S. quarter.

But without other measures, that would have little to no effect on the continuing erosion of value. The government already had cut three zeros in 2008 and five more in 2018.

Despite repeated multiplications of the official minimum wage earned by millions of Venezuelans, it still amounts to about $2 — not even enough to buy a kilogram of chicken.

Millions of Venezuelans anxiously wait for the semi-monthly arrival of a heavily subsidized box of goods that costs between 43 cents and 62 cents and usually includes corn flour, rice, oil, sugar, pasta and beans. Many scramble to make ends meet with side jobs — home bakeries, haircuts, car repairs, food deliveries, barter.

And for some, the ends don’t meet at all.

Per capita consumption of protein dropped 60% between 2013, when President Nicolás Maduro took office, and 2019, according to investment firm Torino Capital. Consumption of chicken plunged 82% during that period, while eggs’ fell 66%.

A report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization found that roughly a third of Venezuelans reported they had no food stored up and 11 percent reported sometimes going a day without food. The U.N. World Food Program in 2019 reported that 6.3% of children under 5 years were acutely malnourished, 13.4% were stunted and 30% were anemic. About 24% of women between the ages of 15 and 49 were also anemic.

The value of the bolivar had been collapsing for years despite — or because of — government efforts to control the exchange rate. It rapidly expanded the money supply even as there was less to spend it on, with an economy that was producing fewer goods and eventually exporting less oil.

But massive blackouts in 2019 began to change the dynamic, said Dagnelly Duarte, an economist for Torino Capital, which has a special focus on Venezuela.

Consumers without an enormous stash of paper bolivars couldn’t go the grocery store because credit card terminals weren’t working. People charged $1 to power up cellphones. Bags with ice went for $10. By the end of the year, the government had abandoned efforts to constrict the U.S. dollar.

That was a boon for the private sector, which began importing all sorts of goods that Venezuelans had not seeing in years.

Duarte said sellers initially were wary of setting prices in dollars; most customers had none and many feared the government would still crack down.

But after awhile, “it became evident that, ‘Look, I’m using dollars and the sale of the products is flowing better.’”

These days, Duarte said, over 60% of transactions are in U.S. dollars — a fact that snarls life for those without greenbacks.

“It’s very complicated for a person like me, who retired from the university — 27 years of service, professional. I had the position of head of public relations … and my salary does not even reach $5,” said Germán Socas, who was buying fruits and vegetables at a market in Caracas.

Even dollar prices have risen sharply, partly because the currency itself is less scarce. A set of basic goods for a family of five — including flour for arepas, chicken, sardines and butter — in May cost almost four times more in dollar terms than it did two years ago, according to Torino Capital.

“In 2019, when (the use of) the dollar was still restricted, with $100 dollars you could make a complete market run, and you still had plenty. Currently, the basic basket is around $390 (a month),” Duarte said.

The same market basket and public transportation costs for a family of five eat up at least 174 minimum wages — about 1.2 billion bolivars.

The shelves stocked with imported olive oils and imported cheeses give “an image of prosperity” said travel agent Viviana Stifano after visiting a supermarket. “But it is an environment of scarcity at the same time because now there is an excess of products, but you do not have the purchasing power to buy the ones you want. You get what you need to barely live.”

All sides blame part of Venezuela’s problems on falling oil prices. Critics blame government mismanagement and corruption for the collapsing output of the country’s main export and its failure to diversify the economy away from oil. From a peak of about 3.2 million barrels of oil a day in 1997, the country with the world’s largest oil reserves today pumps out fewer than 500,000 barrels.

The government blames U.S. sanctions for many of its economic woes and Maduro last month accused a few rich Venezuelans, whom he did not name, of manipulating prices, warning of possible action against them. “There are no untouchables in the Venezuelan oligarchy,” he said.

Price controls, expropriations and other measures also destroyed much of the country’s productive apparatus over the years, and without revenues from oil exports, the government doesn’t have the money for imports to meet its population’s needs.

“In the past, the government would print all the money they wanted and hand it out like confetti all over the economy, and that to some extent, kept the wheels going, if you will, but you still had inequality,” said Raul Gallegos, a risk analyst and author of a book on Venezuela’s economic collapse. But now, “In order to survive, you need dollars.”

___

Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/business-venezuela-caribbean-global-trade-c7287fc7f4ed22103dba930e71bb1572

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SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela (Reuters) – Yaidis Colmenares’ tired and gaunt face leaves little need for explanation as to why the desperate Venezuelan mother of three is fleeing her native country for Colombia.

The 37-year-old weighs 19 kilos (42 pounds) less than she did 10 years ago, she says. She could barely afford to buy food with the money she earned selling candy on the metro in Caracas, amid a strict coronavirus quarantine.

Last week, she walked and hitchhiked 800 kilometers (500 miles) to Venezuela’s western border city of San Cristobal in the hope of reaching neighboring Colombia with her 13-year-old son, her eight-year-old daughter, and her one-year-old baby strapped to her chest.

“Look how malnourished I am,” said Colmenares as she walked with a group of 15 people through a park near a major avenue to avoid roadblocks set up by police and the National Guard to enforce a nationwide quarantine.

“Now everything is in dollars. We have to run or we’ll die,” she said, referring to the increasing dollarization of basic goods in Venezuela that makes them inaccessible to the vast majority of the population, who get paid in local currency.

Venezuelans face an increasingly dysfunctional economy in which fuel shortages make basic transportation impossible and basic goods and services are so expensive that most cannot afford them. Simple chores such as house cleaning and washing clothes have become a constant struggle due to the lack of electricity and running water.

The renewed emigration threatens to swell the ranks of the Venezuelan diaspora throughout South America, a refugee crisis of proportions never witnessed in the region.

The United Nations estimates that some 5 million Venezuelans left the country between 2015 and 2019, mostly for other parts of South America, to escape a hyperinflationary economic collapse under President Nicolas Maduro.

This year, at least 100,000 Venezuelans returned to their country as the pandemic shuttered businesses and left those working as informal street vendors unable to make a living.

Those who returned say they were stigmatized by the government for fueling the disease and ended up in a hand-to-mouth existence that was marred by blackouts, crime, and chronic fuel shortages.

Human Rights Watch in a report this week said returned migrants have faced abusive treatment from Venezuelan authorities, including being held in overcrowded quarantine centers with limited access to food and water.

WALKING THROUGH ROADBLOCKS

Colombia’s migration agency this week said Venezuelan migrants started trickling back in via informal crossing points around a month ago. Colombia’s borders officially remain closed until at least Nov. 1.

Director-General Juan Espinosa of the agency said last week the number of Venezuelans seeking refuge in neighboring Colombia could reach around 2 million within three to five months once the border reopens, up from 1.73 million at the end of July.

Some San Cristobal residents try to support the new wave of migrants by offering advice on the shortest routes or helping them avoid roadblocks and checkpoints set up by the police and the National Guard.

When 30 migrants on their way to the Colombian border were stopped by troops on Oct. 12, a group of neighbors arrived and sang the national anthem as they waved a Venezuelan flag. The troops eventually allowed them through.

“Look at all these Venezuelans who are emigrating because of you, Maduro, don’t try to cover up what’s happening,” shouted Ambar Orellana, 27, walking through San Cristobal with her husband and two children in hopes of reaching Peru.

Orellana said bus drivers carrying migrants had to pay off troops to get through roadblocks and that those on foot were charged $20 each.

Venezuela’s information ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the new wave of migration or the accusations of public officials seeking bribes from migrants.

Juana Contreras, a homemaker in her 60s who lives on the road that leads to the border, said she began in recent weeks cooking arepas – traditional Venezuelan corn pancakes – as well as soup with vegetables to give to migrants.

“They leave because they cannot afford to eat or feed their family,” said Contreras. “It is satisfying to do this because we don’t know if we will suddenly have to do the same. It would be very hard at my age.”

(Reporting by Anggy Polanco, additional reporting by Oliver Griffin in Bogota, writing by Brian Ellsworth and Vivian Sequera; editing by Diane Craft)

Source: https://wkzo.com/2020/10/15/despite-covid-19-new-wave-of-venezuelan-migrants-heads-to-colombia/

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It’s a thought I’ve come back to often as Venezuela’s descent into the abyss proceeds apace. My country’s cycle of self-harm follows the spiral narrative with eerie precision. Five years ago, when President Nicolás Maduro refused to accept the results of a parliamentary election he’d lost, all of the international community was there for us: actively pressing for a return to democratic rule. But with each cycle of protest, repression and exile since, we’ve felt a few more friends fall away. Diplomats, editors, political leaders, intellectuals — one by one, they fall off. You can sense them reclassifying Venezuela into the “hopeless” column in their heads.

In one way, you can’t blame them. A story that never changes is, by definition, not “news” — so Venezuela’s gradual disappearance from the headlines is hardly a mystery. Like a junkie, the country keeps hurting itself in predictable and repetitive ways, exhausting people’s sympathy. Boredom mixes with disgust; disgust paves the way to disengagement. Soon, nobody cares.

It’s easy to be lured into the sense that since a country has suffered for so long, it somehow doesn’t count anymore. This is, of course, an obvious absurdity. But once our reserve capacity for compassion is exhausted, our minds cast around for ways to excuse our disengagement. Helplessness and contempt fuse into a toxic disinterest. The suffering of the people caught in the middle stops registering.

But it doesn’t stop.

Coronavirus cases are now spiking in Venezuela, fueled by a wave of returning migrants who fled extreme poverty in the past few years only to find themselves jobless and penniless in neighboring countries amid a pandemic recession. They’re sneaking back into a devastated country that already couldn’t feed them when they lived there and bringing an uncontrollable disease with them as the government tries to pen them into mandatory quarantine camps near the border.

Back in Caracas, what once passed for political life has turned into a parody of itself, with a fully authoritarian government no longer really pretending to be anything else. In a brazen move against what remained of Venezuela’s democratic tradition, the regime has wrested control of the opposition’s three largest political parties and installed its own stooges as “opposition leaders.” In one sure sign that the socialist revolution has entered the inevitable eating-its-own-children phase, last week saw the arrest of Nicmer Evans, a dissident leftist who has led the opposition to the Maduro regime from the left. Once one of Venezuela’s highest-profile socialist intellectuals, Evans now sits in one of the regime’s dismal prisons facing Orwellian charges of “inciting hatred” against a government he’s long accused of insufficient socialist zeal.

Meanwhile, independent university researchers find Venezuela is now the poorest country in the Americas, with a shocking 96 percent experiencing poverty and food insecurity. The economy has never stopped contracting since 2014, turning extreme deprivation into the now permanent condition of a nation that boasted a large middle class as recently as eight years ago.

The horrors haven’t stopped: Fresh lives are ruined daily. Visibly at a loss for what to do about it and distracted by the pandemic, the world has simply tuned out the horror. Probably, you have, too. And I don’t blame you. It’s only human.

And yet, the children whose growth is being stunted by a needless food crisis in Venezuela right now don’t suffer any less just because we’re bored with the story. The political dissidents still being rounded up and jailed don’t suffer less because we’ve stopped paying attention. The martyrdom of a whole country doesn’t stop just because you stop looking.

But you do stop looking. And I don’t blame you. Even I stop looking, and it’s my job to look. It’s natural. Because every junkie story is too long.

---

Francisco Toro

Francisco Toro is a Venezuelan political commentator and contributing columnist for Global Opinions. He is the chief content officer of the Group of 50.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/21/endless-story-venezuelas-lonely-heartbreaking-decline/

[Disclaimer]

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For the second time in three weeks, U.S. Southern Command has sent a Navy warship through waters off the coast of Venezuela, the combatant command said Wednesday.

The guided-missile destroyer Pinckney steamed through waters off the South American country’s coast to challenge Caracas’ “excessive maritime claims in international waters.”

Such freedom of navigation operations, or FONOPs, occur regularly in the South China Sea, where the U.S. military regularly contests Beijing’s territorial claims, but several such operations have also taken place off Venezuela this year.

A SOUTHCOM release announcing the Pinckney FONOP decried “the illegitimate Maduro regime” of the country’s authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro, and alleges that his government “improperly claims” waters that lie three miles outside of Venezuela’s 12-nautical-mile sea territory.

Pinckney is operating in the Caribbean Sea with other Navy and Coast Guard vessels on a counter-narcotics mission.

“We will exercise our lawful right to freely navigate international waters without acquiescing to unlawful claims,” SOUTHCOM’s commander, Adm. Craig Faller, said in a statement. “The guaranteed rights of nations to access, transit, and navigate international waters is not subject to impositions or restrictions that blatantly violate international law.”

Last month, the warship Nitze conducted a FONOP off Venezuela.

Nitze’s FONOP followed a similar operation in January by the littoral combat ship Detroit.

The United States has joined nearly 60 other countries in backing Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as the country’s legitimate ruler, rather than the dictatorial Maduro, who is accused of illegitimately winning a 2018 election that banned other opponents and driving his oil-rich country into financial ruin.

About Geoff Ziezulewicz

Geoff is a senior staff reporter for Military Times, focusing on the Navy. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was most recently a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at geoffz@militarytimes.com.

Source: https://www.navytimes.com/news/2020/07/15/destroyer-pinckney-challenges-venezuelas-maritime-territorial-claims/

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Thanks to subsidies under socialist former President Hugo Chavez and his successor and protege, Nicolas Maduro, gasoline sold by state oil company PDVSA – which has a legal monopoly on fuel sales – is essentially free in Venezuela.

Motorists offer pump workers tips of snacks or a few hundred bolivares – under 10 U.S. cents – instead of payment.

But the country’s 1.3 million barrel-per-day refining network has all but collapsed, and U.S. sanctions aimed at ousting Maduro have complicated fuel imports, prompting Venezuelans to either wait hours outside gas stations or turn to the pricey black market.

Octavio Salom, 53, said he and fellow kidney patients in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz bought 20 liters of gasoline at $2 per liter for the nurses that provide their dialysis treatment to take a taxi to the clinic.

“They told us that if we could not secure transport, they could not give us dialysis,” Salom said.

In the western city of Maracaibo, black market dealers are offering to deliver 20 liters of gasoline for $50, according to a Reuters witness. In some areas, Venezuelans have reported paying up to $4 per liter.

That was above pump prices in Hong Kong, which surveys show has the world’s most expensive gasoline. Unleaded gasoline at Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) stations in the city sold for $2.15 per liter as of Thursday, the company’s website here showed.

“Now we need to do sketchy deals to be able to get what is ours, gasoline,” said Maria Ines Urdaneta, a university professor in Maracaibo who always keeps a full tank in case her asthmatic son has an attack.

“As a single mother, I need to go negotiate with some guy who bleeds my wallet dry of dollars just to get gasoline.”

Venezuela’s spike comes as pump prices elsewhere are plunging due to falling demand amid the coronavirus outbreak. In the United States, prices averaged $0.48 per liter ($1.81 per gallon) in the week ended April 20, according to the Energy Information Administration.

PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment.

Venezuela’s government is seeking to repair refineries, and this week received refining material from Iran.

The post Venezuela’s gasoline goes from world’s cheapest to steepest first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Millions of Venezuelans have left their country since 2013 as its economy crashed, with schools and hospitals unable to provide basic services.

They fled to neighbouring countries such as Peru, which has given residency to nearly 70,000 Venezuelans.

Some of them are highly qualified, but most are forced to take up menial jobs.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/venezuela-refugee-crisis-collapsed-economy-flee-191230094505677.html

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Venezuelan inflation has exceeded 5500%.  The data were released Monday by the parliament’s finance committee, TASS reported.

Thus, the inflation in November reached up to 35.8%, committee member Angel Alvarado tweeted.

Venezuela faces a socio-economic crisis, accompanied by hyperinflation, the devaluation of the national currency and a shortage of essential goods.

According to UN data, about 4.5 million refugees and migrants left the country, almost 80% of them are in the states of the region. Proceeding from some forecasts, in 2020 their number may increase to 6.5 million people.

Source: https://news.am/eng/news/549002.html

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Venezuela’s embattled President Nicolás Maduro said he had been in talks with the Trump administration for months, even as the US ramped up its sanctions.

The US is one of more than 50 nations which do not recognize Mr. Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.

On Tuesday, Mr. Maduro said that talks with the Trump administration had been going on for months.

But US National Security Adviser John Bolton said the only thing being discussed was Mr. Maduro’s departure.

Speaking on television, Mr. Maduro said: “Just as I have sought dialogue in Venezuela, I have sought a way in which President Trump really listens to Venezuela.”

President Trump confirmed on Tuesday that his administration was “talking to various representatives of Venezuela”.

“I don’t want to say who, but we are talking at a very high level,” the US president said.

Mr. Maduro had suggested that he authorized the back-channel discussions.

But Mr. Bolton cast those contacts in a very different light, tweeting that the “only items discussed by those who are reaching out behind Maduro’s back are his departure and free and fair elections”.

The US imposed sweeping sanctions earlier this month aimed at increasing pressure on President Maduro to step down.

• Venezuela crisis in 300 words
• What’s behind Venezuela’s political crisis?

What is the situation in Venezuela?

The country has been caught up in a struggle for power between President Maduro and the leader of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Juan Guaidó.

Mr. Guaidó declared himself interim president in January, claiming that the elections which brought Maduro to power for a second term were fraudulent.

While Mr. Guaidó has gained the backing of over 50 countries he has so far failed to remove Mr. Maduro from power.

Talks between the two sides hosted by Barbados and mediated by Norway recently stalled after President Maduro denounced the opposition for backing the sweeping sanctions imposed by the US.

The country is suffering one of the worst economic crises in history with a quarter of its 30 million population in need of aid, according to the United Nations.

More than four million Venezuelans have left the country over the past years.

Why is the US involved?

Mr. Maduro’s government has come under fire by the international community for a number of reasons.

When opposition parties gained a majority in the country’s National Assembly, the president created a rival body stacked with his supporters which assumed many of its powers. His 2018 re-election was controversial and labeled as rigged by his critics after many rivals were barred from running or fled the country.

Protests and demonstrations erupted into violence and were met with a crackdown by authorities which saw civilians killed.

The US has been a frequent target of Mr. Maduro’s anger.

• US sanctions may worsen Venezuela suffering – UN
• ‘Corruption network’ in Venezuela’s food program

Mr. Maduro has accused the US, and John Bolton in particular, of trying to kill him, without supplying any evidence. He claims that his opposition is backed by foreign powers, rather than a domestic resistance to his authority.

Government officials were the first target of US sanctions against Mr. Maduro’s government – but earlier this year, it brought new restrictions forward on the state oil company, which is a major player in the national economy.

That was followed in August by sweeping sanctions that froze all property of the government in the US and blocks American firms doing business with Venezuela.

Source:  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49418451

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View of damages in a supermarket in Valencia, Carabobo State, on May 5, 2017, the day after anti-government protesters looted stores, set fire to cars and clashed with police, leaving at least five people injured and one dead. Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP | Getty Images

Wasted oil riches

The post Venezuela hyperinflation hits 10 million percent. ‘Shock therapy’ may be only chance to undo the economic damage first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

This week Venezuela’s central bank unexpectedly published data (link in Spanish) on economic growth and inflation. It’s the first time in years that official figures on the economy have been released. Regular updates stopped in 2015 as president Nicolás Maduro’s government plunged the country into severe economic crisis.

Last summer the IMF said it expected inflation in Venezuela to soar by 1 million percent by the end of 2018. The central bank’s figures don’t quite show seven-digit-inflation, but they do admit to a period of destructive hyperinflation. According to its account, by the end of last year the annual rate of inflation had reached 130,000% (paywall), up from about 860% a year earlier and 260% at the end of 2016. For April 2019, the most recent data, annual inflation was at 282,973%.

This week Venezuela’s central bank unexpectedly published data (link in Spanish) on economic growth and inflation. It’s the first time in years that official figures on the economy have been released. Regular updates stopped in 2015 as president Nicolás Maduro’s government plunged the country into severe economic crisis.

Last summer the IMF said it expected inflation in Venezuela to soar by 1 million percent by the end of 2018. The central bank’s figures don’t quite show seven-digit-inflation, but they do admit to a period of destructive hyperinflation. According to its account, by the end of last year the annual rate of inflation had reached 130,000% (paywall), up from about 860% a year earlier and 260% at the end of 2016. For April 2019, the most recent data, annual inflation was at 282,973%.

In the absence of official data for the past few years, private measures of inflation have been created—some more serious than others. Bloomberg attempts to track it by following the change in price of a café con leche (coffee with milk) in the capital Caracas. The most recent Bloomberg data (paywall) shows the annual inflation rate to be 99,900%.

The central bank’s data also show double-digit declines in GDP for every quarter since the end of 2015. In the third quarter of 2018, the bank says, the economy contracted by 23%.

The IMF, meanwhile, forecasts the economy will contract by 25% this year. Such steep decline is unlikely to let up as millions of people flee the country. Since March, Venezuela has experienced frequent power blackouts. And this week, talks in Norway between Maduro’s government and the opposition ended without resolution.

Source: https://qz.com/1632957/venezuela-has-finally-admitted-to-the-awful-state-of-its-economy/

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