Caracas”•Venezuela ended June with a year-on-year inflation of 3,500 percent, according to a statement published Wednesday by the opposition-controlled legislature.
The figures show inflation is gradually decreasing, having hit almost 3,700 percent in May and 4,200 percent in April.
However, June’s inflation of 19.5 percent was higher than May’s 15.3 percent, opposition legislator Jose Guerra said during a video press conference.
The National Assembly has been publishing monthly inflation figures since 2017 due to a lack of official statistics from the government of President Nicolas Maduro.
Inflation over the first six months of the year was just over 500 percent the statement said.
Venezuela has been in recession for almost seven years and is in the midst of the worst economic crisis in its history.
And it may get worse, according to Guerra, who said hyperinflation could be given “a new impulse with the depreciation of the bolivar.”
The local currency has lost 77 percent of its value in 2020 and depreciated three percent in each of the last two days, he added.
At the end of April, Maduro increased the minimum wage by 77 percent, which includes mandatory food stamps, but that it still amounts only to the equivalent of $3.80 a month.
A family of four needs $250 a month to buy the basic necessities, according to Guerra.
A study published on Tuesday by three main universities found that four out of five Venezuelans could not afford the basic necessities.
Venezuela ended 2019 with inflation of just over 9,500 percent, according to the Central Bank, although the National Assembly calculated it to be 7,300 percent.
