Caracas – Like some Venezuelans, Carmen Mendoza
has learned to cope
with a mosaic of different
income streams in local currency and foreign currency: his pension, renting a property, and about $150 a month that his two daughters send from Spain. But that is no longer enough.
The resurgence of high inflation is eating away at the incomes of Venezuelans, even relatively privileged ones like Mendoza who have access to dollars.
“With dollars and bolívares it is not enough,” said Mendoza, 68, who lives in Los Teques, the capital of the state of Miranda.
Hunger is a familiar specter in Venezuela, which suffered years of hyperinflation in the second half of the last decade as the government of President Nicolás Maduro printed money to pay off its debts amid slowing oil prices.
Many Venezuelans had to scavenge for food and millions fled the country to build a new life in South America and beyond.
Maduro relaxed currency controls in 2019, allowing for de facto dollarization. Combined with orthodox economic policies that include limiting credit expansion, cutting government spending and raising taxes, inflation fell to single digits for a few months last year.
But since late 2022, Venezuela’s consumer price growth has accelerated considerably as those efforts have become less effective.
As countries around the world have grappled with rising inflation following the coronavirus pandemic, soaring prices in Venezuela
is accelerating sharply once again due to rising demand for dollars, a slight rebound in spending, and weakening of the
bolivar, which generates fears
of a new era of hyperinflation.
Years of divestment from the state oil company PDVSA, combined
Coupled with US sanctions on the country’s energy industry, they mean the country cannot count on revenues from crude exports to solve its financial problems, even amid high oil prices.
Inflation in Venezuela reached 234% in 2022, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said in January.
Since the beginning of this year, Yaselin García, 32, has seen the food she buys with the $20 she earns each week selling cigarettes and other items dwindle to just a few eggs, 3 kilograms of cornmeal, some grains and some cheese.
“But if I earned in bolivars, it wouldn’t be enough for anything,” said the mother of four in Los Teques.
The monthly payment of the private sector averages 139 dollars and salaries in the public sector are around 14 dollars per month, according to the Venezuelan Finance Observatory, while the average family food basket reaches about 370 dollars per month.
“Wage increases are lagging behind” even in the private sector, said Asdrúbal Oliveros, an economist and director of local firm Ecoanalítica, adding that “there is already a drop in the purchasing power of dollar wages.”
Oscar Iochunga, 66, sells vegetables at a street market in Caracas, but demand falls every week as people limit their purchases.
“Either with bolívares or with dollars, it is not enough for them,” said Lochunga, sitting in front of his booth.
Markets are full of food that few can afford, prompting people to skip meals or rely on help from charities, said Ania Pulido, a nutritionist with the Venezuelan Observatory for Food and Nutrition Security advocacy group.
The money “that today gave you 20 products for tomorrow does not give you even half,” said Pulido.
50% of Venezuelan households live in poverty, according to the National Survey of Living Conditions carried out by the private Andrés Bello Catholic University, and 41% of those surveyed said they skip one meal a day.
For Yusmary Tovar, 42, who cares for her 5-year-old daughter and her elderly mother, the $80 a month she earns cleaning houses and babysitting is no longer enough.
Tovar has a kidney problem and must use a catheter to urinate. The high cost of catheters forces her to boil them in water and reuse them. “One gets sick from so much thinking and how to do for tomorrow,” she said.
Reuters
Source: Ambito
