Despite the economic contraction, Venezuela’s inflation rate tripled in May – OVF

By Raylí Luján

The inflation rate in Venezuela has not let up, according to reports from the Venezuelan Finance Observatory (OVF), and the annualized inflation rate reached 458% in May, with a growth of 5 percentage points in its monthly variation.

The variation of consumer prices reached 7.6% last month, with significant increases in leisure items, at 13.3%; clothing and footwear at 16.7%; home equipment at 11.4%; and housing rental at 10.3%.

The autonomous entity clarified that although food inflation had shown modest increases throughout the year, it increased by 6.5% in May.

Even so, there has been a weakness in demand, attributed to the wage compression policy that Nicolás Maduro’s administration has been applying.

“This behavior is occurring in an environment where signs of a significant drop in the level of activity are indisputable, ostensible in lower trade sales and an industrial production that contracted during the first quarter of 2023″, was part of the report published by the OVF in its official portal.

The rate in May compared to June tripled, although the twelve-month rate slowed to 84.9%, according to the private organization led by economists and former opposition parliamentarians.

The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) has not yet published the data for May, but in April, the variation of prices was 3.8%, similar to the 2.5% indicated by the OVF.

With information from Bloomberg

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