Venezuela registered inflation of 12.5% in November, which represents an increase of 2.9 percentage points compared to October, when it was 9.6%, according to data released this Thursday by the Venezuelan Observatory of Finance (OVF). an independent entity outside the country’s Central Bank.
The OVF, which warned that Venezuela returned to double monthly digits, which had not been computed since the beginning of 2023, detailed that, at the end of the eleventh month of the year, the accumulated inflation was 60%, while the annualized inflation reached 67% .
Likewise, the observatory – made up of economic experts and former opposition deputies – specified that the sectors that showed the greatest increase in cost were health (16%), clothing and footwear (14%), transportation (13.4%) and food (12%).
He explained that this price increase “is closely related to the depreciation of the bolivar” – the local currency – against the dollar, a currency widely used in Venezuela, where it is used as a reference to calculate the prices of goods and services.
The Government said in October that it is applying measures to seek balance in the foreign exchange market, in view of the gap between the official price of the dollar and the parallel price, which is increasingly expensive.
The Central Bank of Venezuela, which has not yet published November inflation, reported that in October it was 4%, an increase of 3.2 percentage points compared to September, when it closed at 0.8%, while the rate accumulated prices in goods and services reached 16.6%.
With less than a month left until 2024 ends, all estimates suggest that the country will close the year, for the first time in a decade, with double-digit accumulated inflation, after having experienced hyperinflation between 2017 and 2021 that caused almost daily price increases and the devaluation of the local currency.
