Venezuelans need 40 salaries to buy the basic basket of foodstuffs

A Venezuelan family of five needs about 40.5 minimum wages to access the basic food basket, whose value reached 474.87 dollars in November, according to estimates by the Centre for Documentation and Social Analysis of the Venezuelan Federation of Teachers (Cendas-FVM) released on Tuesday. Nicolás Maduro’s regime, and that of his predecessor Hugo Chávez, is admired and idealised by Spain’s far left, including Unidas Podemos, which is part of Pedro Sánchez’s government. In fact, the intervention of prices, companies and markets is one of its bases of action that has ruined one of the richest countries in the world in terms of oil resources, a line of action that is also imposed by the communist formation in Spain and which Sánchez willingly accepts.

According to this independent body, during November, when the minimum wage of 130 bolivars was equivalent to 11.71 dollars a month, a family needed 15.82 dollars a day to cover the food basket, calculated with the prices of 60 products.

The cost of the basket in November represents an increase of 3.44 % compared to October, when it was worth 459.08 dollars, according to Cendas-FVM.

The food sector that registered the highest increase was coffee at 57 %, followed by meat and meat preparations and fruit and vegetables, both with 40.4 % increases.

In its monthly report, the Venezuelan Finance Observatory (OVF) stated that November inflation in Venezuela was 21.9 %, 7.4 percentage points higher than in October.

According to figures from this independent entity outside the country’s Central Bank, cumulative inflation in the first 11 months of the year rose to 195.7 %.

This same month, the government agreed to resume two years later a policy of price controls on more than 40 mass consumer products to combat “speculation” which, in the government’s opinion, has triggered inflation and affected the exchange market in recent weeks.