It will remain in circulation in parallel with the new notes for a few months. The biggest note in the retiring bolivar family, with a face value of a million, is worth barely $0.25 - not enough to buy a piece of candy. The government issued new banknotes in denominations of five, 10, 20, 50, and 100 bolivars, as well as a one-bolivar coin, but has said that it wants the economy to become entirely digital.Īnalysts read this as a way to avoid printing money that will just continue devaluing, eventually requiring another readjustment. With the bolivar losing nearly all its value, seven one-million bolivar notes - very hard to come by - were needed to pay for one loaf of bread before Friday's currency update. Millions have left the country in recent years to try their luck elsewhere. Three in four Venezuelans today live in extreme poverty, according to a recent study, with the economic crisis made worse by US sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic. In May, the government tripled the minimum monthly wage but the new amount was not enough even to buy a kilogram of meat. Venezuela, the once-rich oil producer, is battling its eighth year of recession and hyperinflation that reached nearly 3,000 percent in 2020 and more than 9,500 percent the year before, according to central bank figures.Įconomic consultancy Ecoanalitica expects the 2021 figure to come in at around 1,600. The electronic platform of the public Banco de Venezuela, which has 14 million clients, was also down by mid-afternoon, with those trying to make internet transactions encountering a message apologising for the inconvenience.
"The price (in dollars) has not changed," added the 52-year-old, who was shopping in the upscale Caracas district of Chacao but said she had still paid in old prices using the old bolivars when she took the bus from her working-class neighbourhood of Coche. And there was always the price in dollars." The new prices were displayed above the old ones. Housekeeper Josefina Galindo said that she "went shopping without problems this morning. "Everything expressed in national currency shall be divided by a million," the central bank announced on Friday. The official exchange rate of Venezuela's bolivar went from 4.18 million to the US dollar overnight to just 4.18 as the impoverished country slashed six zeroes off its inflation-battered currency to simplify transactions. It is the third banknote reform in 13 years, with a staggering 14 zeroes shed since 2008, giving Venezuela the dubious distinction of becoming the first South American country to have lopped the most zeroes off its currency.Ī 5 bolivars new banknote is pictured beside an old half million bolivars in Caracas, Venezuela October 1, 2021.
0 kommentar(er)
