Venezuela’s currency has fallen nearly 20 per cent on the black market since the US capture of President Nicolás Maduro, as uncertainty pushes citizens to hoard dollars and the partial US oil blockade chokes the crumbling economy.
The plunge adds to the pressure on interim president Delcy Rodríguez to strike a deal with the US that will get oil flowing and bring much-needed greenbacks into the country. Past economic meltdowns have led to mass emigration, and Rodríguez’s grip on power is partly at the mercy of strongmen security officials who loathe the US.
The black market dollar was quoted at 723 bolívars on Friday by Monitor Dólar Venezuela, up from 585 on January 2, the day before the US operation. The street value fluctuates wildly, with rates being negotiated for every transaction.
The devaluation has already pushed some small businesses to relocate.
Jorge Carrizosa had to close his photocopy shop in the city of Barquisimeto this week and migrated to neighbouring Colombia. “We are all happy with Maduro gone,” Carrizosa said in Cúcuta, a city on the Colombian side of the border. “But the dollar rocketed again, the economy is in another downward spiral — I cannot see a bright future ahead.”
With the US depriving the country of foreign revenue by seizing oil tankers, the gap between black market and official exchange rates has widened dramatically, from about 280 bolívars last week to almost 400 on Friday. At the official rate, it has lost more than 80 per cent of its value since the start of 2025, as the government stopped spending dollar reserves to prop up the bolívar.
Many Venezuelans have stopped spending dollars, preferring to use credit apps or bolívars in the expectation that the local currency will only devalue further.
“No one wants to let go of their dollars,” said Carlos Sulbarán, a motorcycle taxi driver in Caracas, who exchanges the bolívars he’s paid each day for dollars to save. “Then I don’t touch it, because there’s no foreign currency on the street and it will surely become harder to find every day.”
In supermarkets in the capital this week, a kilogramme of beef cost $12, while 30 eggs were sold at $6.30. The minimum wage is just 130 bolívars per month — about 18 cents at Friday’s black market rate — while state workers and pensioners earn monthly $40 bonuses to cover food, plus “economic war” handouts of $120.
The IMF predicts annual inflation will soar from an average of 270 per cent in 2025 past 680 per cent this year, resurfacing memories of the period of six-digit hyperinflation that rocked the country from 2016 to 2019 and drove millions abroad. The central bank has not published inflation data since October 2024.
US President Donald Trump has declared he would “run” Venezuela and oversee its oil industry after arresting Maduro, a revolutionary socialist who presided over an economic contraction of about 75 per cent during his 13-year rule.
“I foresee exchange-rate instability, greater devaluation and a contraction of economic activity and GDP for this year,” said José Guerra, a professor of economics at the Central University of Venezuela.
Rodríguez, whom Trump has backed to deliver US-friendly oil reforms, was economy minister during the last inflation crisis, which she tamed by relaxing price controls and tacitly allowing the US dollar’s use in everyday transactions.
Now, Venezuelans are hoping Rodríguez will be able to work with Washington and US companies to bring investment into the country’s dilapidated oil industry, which has been wrecked by a quarter-century of mismanagement and corruption.
“Delcy Rodríguez has long been the regime’s outward-facing fixer — the ‘good cop’ meant to reassure markets and foreign interlocutors,” said Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez, the Venezuelan managing partner of Aurora Macro Strategies, a global risk consultancy. “Now her role suddenly resembles something closer to a probationary arrangement, with the United States acting as a distant parole officer.”
US sanctions on Venezuelan oil, designed to starve Maduro’s regime of revenues, have compounded the crisis. Chevron, the only US oil company with a licence to operate in Venezuela, exports about 240,000 barrels per day.
The rest of Venezuela’s crude, some 650,000 b/d, had been sold on the black market — largely to China via intermediaries — but now sits in storage tanks as US forces seize sanctioned tankers.
“Oil revenues need to be injected into the economy,” said one Venezuelan businessman in Caracas. “It’s havoc and it must be addressed.”
Trump has pledged to usher in sweeping investment from US oil companies. The promise has met scepticism from large companies that are weighing the risks of re-entering a country with a history of expropriations and a fast-changing political climate. In the meantime, wildcatters are jostling to steal a march on their bigger competitors.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that Washington may remove sanctions on some entities in Venezuela while imposing them on others.
On Wednesday, state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which was sanctioned during Trump’s first term, announced it was in negotiations with Washington “to sell volumes of crude oil” to the US.
The company said the process was similar to that used with Chevron and others, “based on a strictly commercial transaction, within the criteria of legality, transparency and benefit for both parties”.
Despite the turbulent outlook, some business people were bullish about the country’s prospects of foreign companies pumping cash into the energy sector and capital markets, should Washington relax sanctions.
“We are at a Zeitenwende, and the perception is very positive,” said one businessman, in reference to the German term for “an epochal shift” made popular by Chancellor Olaf Scholz as Germany sought to retool its economy in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “My phone has not stopped ringing with people asking, ‘Where do you see opportunities?’”
