Venezuela’s currency has fallen nearly 20 percent on the black market since the US arrest of President Nicolás Maduro, as uncertainty has pushed citizens to hoard dollars and a partial US oil blockade has choked the crumbling economy.
The decline increases the pressure on interim president Delcy Rodríguez to make a deal with the US that will drain oil and bring much-needed greenbacks to the country. Previous economic collapses have led to mass migration, and Rodríguez’s hold on power is part of mercy of the strongmen security officials who hates the US.
The dollar on the black market was quoted at 723 bolívars on Friday at Venezuela Dollar Monitorfrom 585 on January 2, the day before the US operation. The street price fluctuates wildly, with prices being negotiated for each 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 neighboring Colombia. “We are all happy that Maduro is gone,” Carrizosa said in Cúcuta, a city on the Colombian side of the border. “But the dollar is rocketing again, the economy is in another downward spiral – I don’t see a bright future ahead.”
With the US depriving the country of foreign income by seizing oil tankers, the gap between the black market and the official exchange rate has widened, from about 280 bolívars last week to almost 400 on Friday. At the official rate, it has lost more than 80 percent of its value since the beginning of 2025, as the government stopped spending dollar reserves to support the bolívar.
Many Venezuelans have stopped spending dollars, preferring to use credit apps or bolívars in anticipation that the local currency will be cheaper.
“No one wants to give up their dollars,” said Carlos Sulbarán, a motorcycle taxi driver in Caracas, who exchanged the bolívars he pays daily for dollars to save. “Then I won’t touch it, because there is no foreign money on the street and it will certainly become more difficult to find every day.”
In supermarkets in the capital this week, a kilo of meat costs $12, while 30 eggs are sold for $6.30. The minimum wage is just 130 bolívars a month — about 18 cents at Friday’s black market rate — while state workers and pensioners earn monthly bonuses of $40 to cover food, plus “economic war” handouts of $120.
The IMF predicts annual inflation will rise from an average of 270 percent in 2025 past 680 percent this year, bringing back memories of the six-digit hyperinflation period 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 declared he would “run” Venezuela and take control of its oil industry after the arrest of Maduro, a revolutionary socialist who presided over an economic contraction of nearly 75 percent during his 13-year rule.
“I see the instability of the exchange-rate, greater devaluation and a reduction in economic activity and GDP for this year,” said José Guerra, an economics professor at the Central University of Venezuela.
Rodríguez, who was backed by Trump to deliver US-friendly oil reforms, was the economy minister during the last inflation crisis, which he tamed by relaxing price controls and quietly allowing the use of the US dollar in daily transactions.
Now, Venezuelans hope that Rodríguez will be able to work with Washington and US companies to bring investment to the country’s broken oil industry, which has been destroyed by a quarter-century of mismanagement and corruption.
“Delcy Rodríguez has long faced the external fixer of the regime – the ‘good police’ intended to reassure the markets and foreign interlocutors,” said Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez, the Venezuelan managing partner of Aurora Macro Strategies, a global risk consultancy. “Now his role suddenly resembles something closer to a trial 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 exacerbated the crisis. Chevron, the only US oil company with a license to operate in Venezuela, exports about 240,000 barrels per day.
The rest of Venezuela’s crude, about 650,000 b/d, is sold on the black market – much of it in China through intermediaries – but now sits in storage tanks while US forces seize sanctioned tankers.
“Oil revenues must be included in the economy,” said a Venezuelan businessman in Caracas. “This is trouble and it needs to be addressed.”
Trump has promised to continue investment from US oil companies. The promise was fulfilled doubts from large companies evaluating the risks of re-entering a country with a history of expropriations and a rapidly changing political climate. Meanwhile, the wild ones are shaking to steal a march on their major competitors.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that Washington could lift sanctions on some Venezuelan entities while imposing them on others.
On Wednesday, the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which was sanctioned in the first term of Trump, announced that it was in negotiations with Washington “to sell volumes of crude oil” to the US.
The company says that the process is the same as that used by Chevron and others, “based on a strictly commercial transaction, within the criteria of legality, transparency and benefits for both parties”.
Despite the troubled outlook, some businessmen are optimistic about the country’s prospects for foreign companies pumping money into the energy sector and capital markets, if Washington relaxes sanctions.
“We are in a Back pointand the outlook is very positive,” said one businessman, referring to the German term for “an epochal shift” popularized by Chancellor Olaf Scholz as Germany seeks to rebuild its economy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.