Sun, Mar 27, 2022 page12

• Venezuela’s risky currency gambit to tackle inflation

  • By Esteban Rojas / AFP, CARACAS
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  Venezuela has been in recession for eight years, suffered four years of hyperinflation and endured a currency in free fall.

  However, the beleaguered bolivar has, against all odds, managed to stabilize since October last year.

  It is thanks to a US$2.2 billion investment by the state in a bid to slow down inflation in the South American nation.

  

  Nazareth Yanez, left, poses for a photograph in a dress made of bolivar bills in Caracas on March 1. The bolivar is one of the most devalued currencies in the world.

  Photo: EPA-EFE

  Last year ended with inflation at 686 percent — the highest in the world.

  However, that was a significant improvement on the 130,000 percent in 2018, 9,585 percent in 2019 and 3,000 percent in 2020.

  According to consultancy Aristimuno Herrera & Associates, Venezuela’s central bank has injected US$2.2 billion into the internal market over the past five months.

  Banned for 15 years by the government, the US dollar was once scarce and highly prized, exchanging hands on the black market for significantly more than the official exchange rate. Suffering a cashflow crisis, the Venezuelan government was forced to lift the ban in 2019.

  “Offering more dollars than there is demand generates stability in the exchange rate,” Cesar Aristimuno, director at Aristimuno Herrera & Associates, told reporters.

  The bank has acknowledged 29 “interventions” since October last year, although without giving details of the amounts.

  In October, the bank slashed six zeros off the bolivar — making one new bolivar worth a million old ones — with the government saying this would improve faith in the local currency.

  At the same time, authorities imposed a 3 percent tax on foreign currency transactions and cryptocurrencies.

  “The legal tender is and will continue to be the bolivar,” Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who is also the economy and finance minister, told parliament.

  Since October, the exchange rate against the US dollar has moved from 4.18 bolivars to 4.32 bolivars, a depreciation of just 3.24 percent.

  That compares favorably to the depreciation of 76 percent last year and more than 95 percent in each of the previous three years.

  After shrinking by more than 80 percent during eight years of recession, Venezuelan GDP grew by 4 percent last year, the government claims.

  “Our economy is so small that such a policy can be applied. The issue is how long will they sustain it,” said Henkel Garcia, director at Econometrica.

  Some experts fear that the government is “burning” international reserves, but Aristimuno and Garcia say the US dollars have come from an increase in revenues from Venezuelan oil due to rising crude prices and a limited increase in production.

  State oil company PDVSA produced more than 3 million barrels a day in 2014, but that fell to 400,000 a day six years later.

  It has risen to 680,000 barrels a day, OPEC has said.

  The Venezuelan central bank says it has US$10.8 billion in reserves, half the amount of 2014 and one-third of the 2007 figure.

  However, the bank is including US$5 billion provided by the IMF to help mitigate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, but which has been withheld due to questions over the 2018 re-election of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a poll widely dismissed as a fraud.

  While the injection of US dollars has beneficial effects, there is “collateral damage,” Aristimuno said.

  As inflation is high and the exchange rate is stable, the US dollar’s buying power is falling.

  Likewise, “exports are losing their attractiveness” compared to imports, he said.

  Carlos Fernandez Gallardo, president of the FEDECAMARAS employers’ federation, said he is worried.

  “There is an increase in dollar costs for producers, with a pernicious effect on the consumer,” he told reporters. “What will happen if these dollars disappear?”

  In 2018, the government attempted to tackle inflation by obliging banks to keep 85 percent of their reserves in the central bank in an attempt to limit the printing of money.

  That served to reduce credit, which was already in free fall with the depreciating bolivar.

  Venezuela is a credit minnow, with less than US$140 million last year, compared with US$14 billion in neighboring Colombia.

  Aware that credit, investments and growth are intimately related, Caracas partially changed tack last month, allowing loans indexed against the US dollar under certain conditions and reducing the obligatory reserves to 73 percent.

  However, the challenge remains how to promote growth while keeping inflation under control.
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