A man holds a stack of Bolivar bills at a street market in the Katia neighborhood of Caracas on April 6, 2021. (PEDRO RANCES MATTEY/AFP via Getty Images)
The Venezuelan Central Bank said in February that the country would end 2020 with 3,000 percent inflation. 1, the Venezuelan labor minister announced that the minimum wage had been raised nearly three times, but inflation was so severe that the money from the salary increase was still not enough to buy a kilogram of meat.
Labor Minister Eduardo Pinate announced this salary increase to government supporters at the May Day Labor Day Conference in Caracas.
The adjusted minimum monthly salary is 7 million bolivares, equivalent to $2.50, and it costs about $3.75 to buy a kilogram of meat in Venezuela.
Venezuela’s leftist President Nicolas Maduro is under international sanctions initiated by the United States. The U.S. position is that Maduro must step down and not be recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela.
A man (right) examines a U.S. dollar bill at a market in Caracas on Dec. 5, 2020. (CRISTIAN HERNANDEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Venezuela is rich in oil, the country’s central bank announced in 2019, with oil exports plummeting to $29.8 billion in 2018 from $85.6 billion in 2013 and $71.7 billion in 2014. Oil exports account for 96 percent of Venezuela’s national revenue, but oil prices collapsed in 2014 and the country began a political and economic crisis at that time.
The Venezuelan central bank stopped providing official data three years ago, without giving a reason, but has actually been reducing the amount of economic information it releases for a long time.
Currently, the country is in its 4th year of hyperinflation and 8th year of economic recession. There is a severe shortage of food, medicine, and even the most basic toilet paper and soap, and inflation has gotten so bad that daily economic activities are mainly denominated in U.S. dollars.
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