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Venezuela decrees economic emergency
Venezuela\'s socialist government decreed an \"economic emergency\" on Friday that will expand its powers and published the first data in a year that shows the depth of a recession fueled by low oil prices and a sputtering state-led model.
Caracas: Venezuela's socialist government decreed an "economic emergency" on Friday that will expand its powers and published the first data in a year that shows the depth of a recession fueled by low oil prices and a sputtering state-led model.
The central bank, which has been lambasted by critics of President Nicolas Maduro's government for hiding statistics since the end of 2014, said the South American OPEC nation's economy shrank 4.5 per cent in the first nine months last year.
Inflation soared in that period to an annual rate of 141.5 percent, the world's worst. Venezuela's oil-dependent economy is forecast to perform abysmally again in 2016. Maduro lost control of the National Assembly in a December election due to voter ire over the crisis. The government's decree, which the opposition-led assembly says it has the power to approve or reject, sets a 60-day "economic emergency" and would give Maduro wider powers to intervene in companies or limit access to currency.
"We are confronting a true storm," Maduro said during his state-of-the-nation address to Congress. "This is not Maduro's storm, as some believe, it is a situation throughout the country that affects every Venezuelan family." He vowed the country would continue servicing foreign debt despite slipping international reserves, negating growing Wall Street pessimism about a potential default this year.
