CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced a 40 per cent increase to the minimum wage as of January, a move that will foment what many economists already consider hyperinflation in the oil-rich but crisis-stricken nation.

In his televised year-end address, leftist Maduro said the new wage level would protect workers against what he calls Washington’s “economic war” to sabotage socialism. “Good news!” said the former bus driver and union leader, speaking next to a Venezuelan flag in a midday address.

Most economists say the government is in fact fomenting a vicious cycle in a country already wrestling with the world’s fastest inflation. To counter those price increases, Maduro has been raising the minimum wage, but quickening inflation coupled with a depreciating bolivar currency has plunged millions into poverty.

Venezuelans will now earn some 797,510 bolivars a month, factoring in food tickets, or just over $7 on the widely used black market index. Millions will still be unable to afford three meals a day, while the increase is likely to stoke inflation further.

Prices went up 1,369 per cent between January and November, according to figures released earlier this month by the opposition-led Congress, which estimated the 2017 rate would top 2,000 per cent. The Venezuelan government no longer publishes inflation data on a regular basis. Opposition politicians say Maduro’s refusal to overhaul Venezuela’s state-led economic model and stop excessive money printing will only create more misery in 2018.

Maduro, however, spent much of his half-hour address blaming others for the country’s woes. He said foreign and local media were spreading “negative propaganda,” while Venezuela was facing “attacks” on its currency and attempts to “sabotage” its oil industry.

The prospect of a Venezuelan debt default triggering a clash between revolutionary socialists and foreign creditors has overshadowed an equally complicated dilemma facing the Opec nation: a standoff with its own citizens who are bondholders. Though Venezuela’s junk bonds are popular among high-rolling Wall Street funds, they are also widely held by Venezuelans due to a decade-long Socialist Party policy of subsidizing the purchase of foreign debt by individual investors.

Large Venezuelan businesses have also plowed significant resources into bonds to use the exorbitant yields to compensate for sharp declines in sales amid the implosion of the country’s socialist economic system.

The result is that any future debt negotiations will include Venezuelans ranging from high-net-worth individuals to humble retirees and college professors.

Reuters