Since the end of last year, President Nicolás Maduro has revived his narrative against the “criminal dollar” of the parallel market, but the BCV dollar has continued to increase with the same frequency as its informal counterpart.
The official exchange rate, published by the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), reached Bs 20.29 this Thursday, January 19, surpassing the Bs 20 barrier that had hovered over the last week.
Attention ?|| The exchange rate published by the BCV is the weighted average of the operations of the exchange desks of banking institutions. At the close of business on Thursday 01-19-2023, the results are:#Exchange market #BCV?? pic.twitter.com/kUNyUMsXAM
– Central Bank of Venezuela (@BCV_ORG_VE) January 19, 2023
In this way, the official dollar is close to the black market rate, which closed this Thursday at Bs 22.47, according to what the Twitter account Monitor Dólar Venezuela indicates, which is in charge of averaging the amounts established by different platforms that make monitoring of the informal exchange market.
With this increase, the parallel dollar marks an increase of Bs 3.02 so far this year, since the BCV exchange rate began 2023 with an amount of Bs 17.27.
Since late last year, President Nicolás Maduro has revived his narrative against the “criminal dollar” of the parallel market. In his opinion, unscrupulous economic actors have encouraged this rise through the use of pages that publish rates on social networks.
Despite the denunciation of the Chavista leader, the official dollar does not lose its pulse against the parallel dollar and its rise is progressively evident, to the point of increasing 339% in one year, since in January 2022 it was fixed at about Bs 4, 62 per currency.
During the first half of 2022, the exchange rate —both official and parallel— remained stable thanks to a monetary intervention policy applied by the BCV, injecting dollars into exchange tables in order to increase the supply of foreign currency to meet demand and thus anchor the rate.
*Read also: BCV increased its exchange offer by 21% in 2022 but could not with the dollar
Economists warned for months that this policy was not only inefficient and unsustainable, but also emptied the state coffers. Starting in August, the strategy stopped working and the dollar rose in price rapidly.
This depreciation of the bolivar against the dollar resulted in the impoverishment of the Venezuelan population that generates income in bolivars.
The minimum wage —which governs the salary tables in the public administration— was adjusted to Bs 126 in March 2022. At that time, according to the official exchange rate, it was equivalent to about $30. Nine months later, this amount translates to just $6.2.
Due to the very poor salary set by the Government for its own workers, the last few weeks have been marked by protests from different sectors, led especially by teachers and university professors who demand a salary increase.
Maduro and other government spokesmen have referred to the possible salary increase in recent days, but in their latest speeches no announcement has been reserved and they have justified the low salary with the sanctions imposed by the United States.
*Read also: Maduro blames the “sustained labor” for the salary to the US sanctions
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