Connect with us

Politics

Venezuela State Close To Total Collapse, Merchants Demanding Payments

Published

6 years ago

on

(Via Reuters)

By Eyanir Chinea and Maria Ramirez

CARACAS/CIUDAD GUAYANA, Venezuela (Reuters) – There was no way Jose Ramon Garcia, a food transporter in Venezuela, could afford new tires for his van at $350 each.

Whether he opted to pay in U.S. currency or in the devalued local bolivar currency at the equivalent black market price, Garcia would have had to save up for years.

Though used to expensive repairs, this one was too much and put him out of business. “Repairs cost an arm and a leg in Venezuela,” said the now-unemployed 42-year-old Garcia, who has a wife and two children to support in the southern city of Guayana.

“There’s no point keeping bolivars.”

For a decade and a half, strict exchange controls have severely limited access to dollars. A black market in hard currency has spread in response, and as once-sky-high oil revenue runs dry, Venezuela’s economy is in free-fall.

The practice adopted by gourmet and design stores in Caracas over the last couple of years to charge in dollars to a select group of expatriates or Venezuelans with access to greenbacks is fast spreading.

Food sellers, dental and medical clinics, and others are starting to charge in dollars or their black market equivalent – putting many basic goods and services out of reach for a large number of Venezuelans.

According to the opposition-led National Assembly, November’s rise in prices topped academics’ traditional benchmark for hyperinflation of more than 50 percent a month – and could end the year at 2,000 percent. The government has not published inflation data for more than a year.

“I can’t think in bolivars anymore, because you have to give a different price every hour,” said Yoselin Aguirre, 27, who makes and sells jewelry in the Paraguana peninsula and has recently pegged prices to the dollar. “To survive, you have to dollarize.”

The socialist government of the late president Hugo Chavez in 2003 brought in the strict controls in order to curb capital flight, as the wealthy sought to move money out of Venezuela after a coup attempt and major oil strike the previous year.

Oil revenue was initially able to bolster artificial exchange rates, though the black market grew and now is becoming unmanageable for the government.

TRIM THE TREE WITH BOLIVARS

President Nicolas Maduro has maintained his predecessor’s policies on capital controls. Yet, the spread between the strongest official rate, of some 10 bolivars per dollar, and the black market rate, of around 110,000 per dollar, is now huge.

While sellers see a shift to hard currency as necessary, buyers sometimes blame them for speculating.

Rafael Vetencourt, 55, a steel worker in Ciudad Guayana, needed a prostate operation priced at $250.

“We don’t earn in dollars. It’s abusive to charge in dollars!” said Vetencourt, who had to decimate his savings to pay for the surgery.

In just one year, Venezuela’s currency has weakened 97.5 per cent against the greenback, meaning $1,000 of local currency purchased then would be worth just $25 now.

Maduro blames black market rate-publishing websites such as DolarToday for inflating the numbers, part of an “economic war” he says is designed by the opposition and Washington to topple him.

On Venezuela’s borders with Brazil and Colombia, the prices of imported oil, eggs and wheat flour vary daily in line with the black market price for bolivars.

In an upscale Caracas market, cheese-filled arepas, the traditional breakfast made with corn flour, increased 65 percent in price in just two weeks, according to tracking by Reuters reporters. In the same period, a kilogram of ham jumped a whopping 171 percent.

The runaway prices have dampened Christmas celebrations, which this season were characterized by shortages of pine trees and toys, as well as meat, chicken and cornmeal for the preparation of typical dishes.

In one grim festive joke, a Christmas tree in Maracaibo, the country’s oil capital and second city, was decorated with virtually worthless low-denomination bolivar bills.

Most Venezuelans, earning just $5 a month at the black market rate, are nowhere near being able to save hard currency.

“How do I do it? I earn in bolivars and have no way to buy foreign currency,” said Cristina Centeno, a 31-year-old teacher who, like many, was seeking remote work online before Christmas in order to bring in some hard currency.

(Additional reporting by Andreina Aponte and Leon Wietfeld in Caracas, Mircely Guanipa in Maracay, Anggy Polanco in San Cristobal, Lenin Danieri in Maracaibo; Writing by Girish Gupta; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Culture

Trump Is Poised To Take 2024 By Storm

Published

2 years ago

on

January 23, 2022

By

Biden has unsuccessfully been able to reform any issues left by the Trump administration and quite frankly has only made it worse. Inflation and the economy is hurting everyone, especially lower income voters who ironically voted for Biden. This has set off a windstorm for Biden as his approval rating goes further down the drain. With little hopes of any major policy wins before the 2022 election, Biden’s Administration, which championed “getting things done”, has stopped before it really even got off the ground.

With 2022 around the corner we will see a slue of Republican Presidential challengers, with Trump of course, being at the center of the pack. Rumors have it that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and the like of Mitt Romney will all join the nomination, however this is only rumor and speculation. Trump however, will become the nominee. It would be hard for anyone to top someone who has already been President, even a firebrand like DeSantis, who has garnered  national support for a Presidential run.

Biden has failed so miserably that when a another Democrat attempts to challenge Trump’s economy compared what we are in now, it will be completely inexcusable. Not to mention the major social engineering the majority of parents and Americans are rejecting in terms of the LGBTQ Mafia Agenda & BLM. Biden, if anything, has completely destroyed the Democratic party’s chance of being a favorite with middle and upper-income voters, setting a disasters for the Democrats in 2024.

Continue Reading

Politics

Lauren Witzke: Among Several Children on Hunter Biden Laptop, Including Chris Coon’s Daughter

Published

3 years ago

on

October 25, 2020

By

Well, folks. The dam is finally breaking on what is exactly going on with the Hunter Biden laptop scandal that the corporate media has refused to cover, simultaneously big tech is clamping down attempts to use their platform to share the story. And now we know why, because it involves underage children.

This weekend, Senatorial Candidate in Delaware and America First Patriot, Lauren Witzke, has exposed the most damning allegation yet. With an official police source confirming that Chris Coon’s Daughter is one of several children on the Hunter Biden laptop.

There are other allegations going around possible connections to foreign children being on the Hunter Biden laptop as well as several children of other politicians including one of Barack Obama’s daughter.

This only further proves Joe Biden and his entire family, and Chris Coons, are completely compromised by foreign entities and domestic deep state actors within our Government. They hold no allegiance to anything but what their masters tell them to do, because at the end of the day they are at the whims of others leaking this information and publicly destroying them and their career.

We can only imagine more damning allegations are coming to break now that we have a first look at just how explosive the “Laptop From Hell”, as President Donald Trump puts it, really is.

Continue Reading

Politics

Trump Judges & The Purge

Published

3 years ago

on

August 16, 2020

By

I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by six.

That great lyric from Ice Cube has more bite and meaning in the run up to the 2020 election. Now we have the investigation of the investigators. The Mueller investigation and everything it has encompassed is now being scrutinized. We are finally looking at indictments and guilty pleas from the corrupt cabal that tried to bring down, frame, jail and impeach a duly elected, INNOCENT president and anyone in his sphere. Getting to the point of investigating the investigators has been a long hard slog.

We did not foresee how really deep and treacherous the swamp really was. You could investigate, indict and try someone like a Hillary Clinton for example, and someone of authority in that chain is a corrupt actor from the Deep State and you will then see the guilty party skate free. Or you can have a completely innocent Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, George Papodopoulos railroaded by a corrupt judge. The Michael Flynn case is the most glaring. The DOJ has dropped the case and charges against him and in an unprecedented move the judge does not drop the case, he extends it as if he is the prosecutor.

So there is a light at the end of the tunnel my friends. Donald Trump has been appointing a record number of federal judges. This is a brilliant move and somewhat frustrating and time consuming. But there is a method to the madness. Why investigate, indict and try just for a Deep State judge to let the guilty party walk free? Donald Trump has appointed over 300 judges and counting. More will be appointed to the bench and now there is a more likely chance when the guilty parties are tried, there will be justice. So there is a silver lining in this swamp covered cloud.

News@11

By Michael Ameer

Continue Reading

Trending

Donate to Populist Wire

*Note: Every donation is greatly appreciated, regardless of the amount.