{"id":173242,"date":"2018-07-25T22:38:36","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T02:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=173242"},"modified":"2018-07-25T22:38:36","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T02:38:36","slug":"inflation-hit-venezuela-unveils-new-money-5-fewer-zeros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/25\/inflation-hit-venezuela-unveils-new-money-5-fewer-zeros\/","title":{"rendered":"Inflation hit Venezuela unveils new money with 5 fewer zeros"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Maduro said the monetary conversion will spark \u201cgreat revolutionary changes in the economy, which Venezuela demands.\u201d (Photo: Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CARACAS, Venezuela \u2014 \u00a0President Nicola Maduro unveiled plans Wednesday for combatting runaway inflation in Venezuela \u2014 \u00a0by printing new paper money with five fewer zeros.<\/p>\n

The announcement came two days after the International Monetary Fund warned that Venezuela’s inflation could top 1 million per cent this year.<\/p>\n

Maduro said the monetary conversion will spark \u201cgreat revolutionary changes in the economy, which Venezuela demands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but it is five years into an economic crisis with shortages of food and medicine that is driving mass migration.<\/p>\n

The new bills will begin circulating Aug. 20.<\/p>\n

Paper money is hard to get in Venezuela, where the largest bill today is the 100,000-bolivar note, equal to less than 1 cent on the commonly used black market exchange rate. A simple lunch easily costs 3 million bolivars.<\/p>\n

The new paper bills will have denominations ranging from 2 up to 500. The lowest represents the buying power of 200,000 current bolivars, the highest stands in for 50 million.<\/p>\n

Printing new money is a move Venezuela has taken before to combat soaring inflation that requires more and more bolivars to make a purchase. In 2008, then President Hugo Chavez issued new currency that eliminated three zeros.<\/p>\n

In March, Maduro announced that Venezuela would print money with three fewer zeros, but it was never carried out, and inflation continued to soar.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Maduro spoke on national TV to his economic team, also vowing a renewed focus on Venezuela’s failing oil sector, but providing no details for improving crude production.<\/p>\n

Early this week, IMF officials compared Venezuela’s economic turmoil to Germany’s after World War I and Zimbabwe’s at the beginning of the last decade. They said Venezuela’s economic fall was among the world’s deepest in six decades.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CARACAS, Venezuela \u2014 \u00a0President Nicola Maduro unveiled plans Wednesday for combatting runaway inflation in Venezuela \u2014 \u00a0by printing new paper …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":153694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-w","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}