The country’s currency, the bolivar, is being slashed in value week-on-week. Just last month, people in Venezuela’s capital city, Caracas, could buy a cup of coffee for a whopping £2 million bolivares, a price 87 percent higher than 12 months before.
But since then, the inflation has already jumped higher, meaning the same coffee will now cost almost the double when compared to July’s prices.
And as they grow at an astounding rate, the IMF has projected inflation will hit an astronomical one million percent by the end of this year.
Alejandro Werner, the head of the IMF’s western hemisphere department, wrote in a blogpost on Monday night: “We expect the government to continue to run wide fiscal deficits financed entirely by an expansion in base money, which will continue to fuel an acceleration of inflation as money demand continues to collapse.”
We are millionaires, but we are poor
This prediction marks a drastic increase from the one released just last April, when the IMF predicted inflation would reach a 13,000 percent.
Such a rate puts Caracas in a similar position to Zimbabwe in early 2000s and Germany in the 1920s, before the rising of Nazism.
José Pacheco, a 61-year-old fruit vendor, has witnessed first-hand the growth of prices.
Months ago he was being paid for his goods with box full of 100 bolivar notes.
Venezuela crisis: The bolivar is being slashed in value week-on-week (Image: GETTY)
But now, he explained, even those have lost all their value, leading him to accept only newly minted 100,000 bolívar notes.
He added: “It’s crazy to accept notes of 100, 500, or 1,000 bolivares.
“Otherwise it’s a box [full of notes] that afterwards we have to take to the bank.”
The country’s socialist president Nicolas Maduro has announced Venezuela will rein in hyperinflation by simply losing five zeroes from its currency.
But similar adjustments have been tried already by other countries in crisis, with little to none success.
During its lowest period, Zimbabwe issued a $100 trillion banknote, which in 2009 was still not enough to buy a bus ticket in the capital city, Harare.
Asdrubal Oliveros, director of Ecoanalítica, a Caracas-based economics consultancy, said: “It’s a cosmetic solution that won’t do anything.
“With inflation this wild, in a few months we’ll be back in the same situation.”
Venezuela crisis: The IMF predicted that by the end of the year the inflation will hit 1million% (Image: GETTY)
Venezuela crisis: The minimum wage is barely enough to buy a kg of meat, according to a nurse (Image: GETTY)
The decreasing value of the bolivar is bringing the population on the brink of starvation.
The minimum wage is currently 5 million bolivars a month, which equals some £31 ($41).
Maigualida Oronoz, a 43-year-old nurse, said her minimum wage is barely enough to buy a kilogram of meat to feed her children.
She added: “We are millionaires, but we are poor.
“We can just about eat, but if some health emergency happens we’ll die because the prices of medicines are sky-high and rise every day.”
Venezuela crisis: Nicolas Maduro, the country’s president (Image: GETTY)
Pensioners are the most vulnerable in this situation, as they receive their monthly payment in cash – despite the currency’s value is plunging.
Saúl Aponte, a 73-year-old retiree, is able to buy only half a carton of eggs with 20 notes of 100,000 bolivares.
He said: “At the end of the year, if they pay the pension in cash we will have to go with a wheelbarrow to buy the same half a carton.”
Since 2013, when the crisis sparked, millions of people have been barely able to access to food and medicines.
Venezuela is currently one of the most dangerous countries in the world, with crime rates continuing to set records.