VENEZUELA

On January 15, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro gave his annual message to the National Assembly. During his speech, Maduro gave Venezuela’s macroeconomic figures, where he indicated that the country’s growth is estimated at 4% in terms of GDP for 2021 and that the hyperinflation that plagues the country was contained, reaching months where the inflation figure was in single digits. In addition, he dedicated a chapter to the digital economy, alluding that although the dollar will be allowed to coexist with cryptocurrencies in Venezuela and the Bolivar will not cease to exist as the official means of exchange. Finally, he proposed the Plan 2022-2030 agenda to boost the government system. “We need a permanent revolution, a permanent renewal, a change for the better, for good.” He added that a revolution that stagnates and becomes conservative, that believes that everything is fine and everything is done, is no longer a revolution, it is simply a government, a party or a policy and ceases to be a revolutionary process. “Our essence is a process of changes,” Maduro emphasized.

The Head of State informed that Venezuela set out to achieve a 100% digital economy and in the past year it was possible to consolidate this premise in 80%. “It is not everything we aspired to, but it is a good step, we have created the conditions for the digital Bolivar and its launching and the monetary reconversion was a success of the Central Bank of Venezuela”, said Maduro. He specified that in 2021 there were 121,432,000 digital transactions, which refers to a 65% increase in economic transactions. “We have achieved mechanisms that are allowing the defense of the Bolivar and the coexistence with the dollar and other currencies and cryptocurrencies, it is the economy of the new era. Venezuela has not renounced and will never renounce its currency, the Bolivar”, highlighted the President.

 The announcement made by the Venezuelan President is in line with the approval by the National Assembly of the budget for 2022, which contemplates the fiscal and budgetary guidelines that the Executive Branch identifies as priorities, among which stand out the consolidation and expansion of the use of the Venezuelan cryptocurrency Petro, increase foreign currency inflows to the country, promote productive diversification and stabilize the value of the exchange rate with a single rate. Likewise, this message will give strength to the treatment of the reform bill to the Law of Tax on Large Financial Transactions, included in the priorities of the ruling party for 2022, with the aim of “privileging the national currency” in the payments of tax transactions, in the words of Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez.