While hardly a surprise in a country in which the military recently seized control of the water supply as the local infrastructure collapses, what is going on to the price of money in this former socialist paradise is simply stunning and is set to put even the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe to shame.
In June, Venezuela’s annual inflation hit 46,305% the opposition-controlled congress said on Monday, as the crisis-stricken nation’s hyperinflation continues to accelerate amid a broader economic collapse even as president Maduro refuses to make any structural changes to the nation which boasts the world’s largest petroleum reserves.
To be sure, the number is not official as Maduro’s government stopped publishing economic indicators nearly three years ago the country’s economic system started falling apart, making opposition legislators the only source of such figures. This makes it virtually impossible to visualize the inflationary trend, although Bloomberg’s Cafe Con Leche index sit at a roughly comparable level of 43,478%. More absurdly, annualizing the last three months of data, paints an even more dismal picture: inflation of 482,153%.
Looking at just the past month, Reuters reports that June inflation accelerated to 128.4%, the fastest this year, from 110.1% in May, according to opposition legislator Angel Alvarado. Even more shocking, food prices rose by 183% in June.
“It is by far the worst hyperinflation suffered by a Latin American country,” Alvarado said in an interview.
Putting this inflation in monetary equivalents, one million bolivars is currently the equivalent of a mere 29 cents.
Maduro, who was reelected in May in a vote that virtually all foreign observes described as rigged, promised to take measures to improve the situation. So far he has failed to do so, and instead insists that the problems are the result of an “economic war” led by the opposition business leaders who arbitrarily raise prices. There was no mention that this is the inevitable outcome of a corrupt government controlling all means of production.
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