A study on the income of Venezuelans presented in early May by Equilibrium Cende revealed that half of all Venezuelan adults living in the country have a monthly income of up to 100 US dollars, which is not enough to cover their living expenses in a context of high inflation in the country.

The study stems from a survey conducted in April 2023, which found that 11 million Venezuelans earn less than $100 a month.

Likewise, the report specifies that 2% of the respondents reported a monthly income of more than 550 dollars. The figure suggests that only around 430,000 individuals in the country have an income above that amount.

Meanwhile, 74% of Venezuelans over the age of 18 earn $200 or less a month, and only 7%, -around 1.5 million people- earn more than $350 per month.

The study also pointed out that a good part of the population with the lowest income work in the public sector or live on their social security pensions.

LOW INCOME

Contrary to the expectations, Maduro did not announce an increase in the minimum wage to mark the celebration of Workers’ Day on May 1, reporting instead an increase in the monthly allowance of food stamps to $40 and the so-called “war bonus” to $20, which he later changed to $30.

Maduro said that the benefits will be indexed every month to the official exchange rate set by the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV).

The last salary raise declared by the authorities took place in March 2022. For months, workers in fields of education, healthcare and other areas of the public sector have been holding weekly protests due to the delays in the raise of wages.

More than two million people are employed by the public sector, and pensioners of the social security system account for a further three million, according to data cited by Reuters.

The delay in the raise of salaries has been part of a government policy of cutting public spending that seeks to control inflation, along with other measures such as the injection of dollars into the exchange market.

Annualized inflation as of April 2023 stood at 501%, according to the Observatory on Venezuelan Finance, which monitors economic indicators in the absence of official figures.

According to the non-governmental Center for Documentation and Social Analysis (Cendas) the price of the Basic Food Basket, consisting of 60 meals for a family of five, reached 510 US dollars in March.

Translated by José Rafael Medina