Nicolás Maduro orders 150% hike to minimum wage in Venezuela

[Blexfraptor]

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, ordered an increase in the minimum wage of 150 percent on Thursday as of December, as part of measures to adjust the economic program with which he tries to alleviate a severe economic crisis.

The base income of workers will go from 1,800 bolivars to 4,500 bolivars as of December 1, the socialist president told the state television, as part of some "corrections" that are prepared to the package of measures that began to apply since August.

The adjustment comes after Maduro ordered in August raise the workers' minimum wage 60 times to improve their purchasing power under hyperinflation and recession, a measure that took effect in September.

"This correction factor comes as a Christmas gift (...) (It) to improve the life of the people," said Maduro from the presidential palace. "We have achieved a significant deceleration of inflation, which is still worrying," he added.

The president did not offer official figures on the inflation rate, which according to the opposition Congress accelerated in the last year to stand at 833,997 percent in October and the International Monetary Fund estimates that it will reach one million percent at the end of 2018.

The new minimum income of Venezuelans is equivalent to about 10 dollars, if one takes into account the parallel exchange rate that traders and entrepreneurs use as a reference to fix most of the prices of the local economy.

Maduro said that in the coming days there will be increases on some regulated prices and the official exchange rate will be dropped, which has hardly changed after the devaluation of 96 percent in the middle of the year.

This correction factor comes as a Christmas gift.

The president also modified the value assigned by his government to Venezuela's crypto-currency Petro, from 3,600 bolivares to 9,000 bolivares.

With the change, increases will also be applied on the salaries of all public officials