AFP, Caracas :
Julio Ribas suffers from high blood pressure. If only Venezuela’s currency were as high, he might be able to afford some medicine for it.
Venezuela is short of drugs, and to buy some from abroad, Ribas needs dollars — but those are in desperately short supply too.
Ribas is just one of the countless casual victims of the economic crisis in Venezuela, where inflation and anger are rising as the currency falls.
“I put in a request a month ago for $300,” the 55-year-old shopkeeper told AFP.
“I want to send them to my daughter who is working in Panama. I need her to buy me my blood-pressure medicine there.”
But in the meantime, the value of his bolivars to the dollar has fallen by more than a third.
At the exchange bureau, employee Manuel Guevara tells Ribas he will have to wait up to two months more. No one knows how much the dollar will be worth then.
The weaker the bolivar gets, the more people want to get hold of the stronger US currency because they can buy more with it.
That growing demand drives up the price of dollars and weakens the bolivar even more. It makes Venezuela’s scarce food and goods even more expensive.
“They’ve had this inflation-depreciation spiral now for more than three years,” said US economist Mark Weisbrot.
It has been aggravated by a shortage of dollars and the fall in the price of Venezuela’s oil exports, said Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
In February, Maduro reformed the state-controlled currency system, loosening state controls on the bolivar.
He maintained the strong fixed rate for essential imports but allowed the rate for other goods to float.
He hoped that would close the gap between that official dollar rate and the black market rate.
But since dollars are so scarce, the black market remains king.
Julio Ribas suffers from high blood pressure. If only Venezuela’s currency were as high, he might be able to afford some medicine for it.
Venezuela is short of drugs, and to buy some from abroad, Ribas needs dollars — but those are in desperately short supply too.
Ribas is just one of the countless casual victims of the economic crisis in Venezuela, where inflation and anger are rising as the currency falls.
“I put in a request a month ago for $300,” the 55-year-old shopkeeper told AFP.
“I want to send them to my daughter who is working in Panama. I need her to buy me my blood-pressure medicine there.”
But in the meantime, the value of his bolivars to the dollar has fallen by more than a third.
At the exchange bureau, employee Manuel Guevara tells Ribas he will have to wait up to two months more. No one knows how much the dollar will be worth then.
The weaker the bolivar gets, the more people want to get hold of the stronger US currency because they can buy more with it.
That growing demand drives up the price of dollars and weakens the bolivar even more. It makes Venezuela’s scarce food and goods even more expensive.
“They’ve had this inflation-depreciation spiral now for more than three years,” said US economist Mark Weisbrot.
It has been aggravated by a shortage of dollars and the fall in the price of Venezuela’s oil exports, said Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
In February, Maduro reformed the state-controlled currency system, loosening state controls on the bolivar.
He maintained the strong fixed rate for essential imports but allowed the rate for other goods to float.
He hoped that would close the gap between that official dollar rate and the black market rate.
But since dollars are so scarce, the black market remains king.
