Doubts, uncertainty and indifference of Venezuelans on their new currency

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In 2 weeks, Venezuela will debut its new currency in the third reconversion this century, whereby 6 zeros will be eliminated from the sovereign bolivar and the digital bolivar will be born; however, far from perceiving it as a respite, Venezuelans have been waiting with doubt and the indifference of those who have become accustomed to a de facto dollarization.

In the streets, there are still many who are unaware that in 2 weeks their national currency will be changed for the third time and, as José Torres, a vendor in the central Caracas boulevard of Sabana Grande, explains, “everyone has doubts.” “Everyone, everyone in Venezuela has their doubts as to how the bolivar is going to affect us,” he says.

All this, despite the fact that Venezuelan commerce is “based on dollars” and is not “influenced by the bolivar,” which today and until the start of next month is called sovereign, only “for a little change.”

On the street one can see that few purchases can be made in “sovereigns,” created to eliminate 5 zeros from the currency and replace the “bolivar fuerte,” which had eliminated another 3 zeros.

Most products are paid in U.S. currency, even in informal stores or in the most popular areas, and, as Torres explains, every day it loses more purchasing value.

“In other countries, you can see that a currency is going to devalue, but not the dollar, in this country the dollar is devaluing daily,” he explains before saying that he has seen how a package of corn flour has increased from US$1 to US$2 in several regions.

It is precisely the growing power of the dollar that has Venezuelans more dismissive of the advent of their new currency, which they suspect will be of little use in their daily lives.

LACK OF KNOWLEDGE

Not far away, Jessica Parra sells “tequeños” (cheese sticks) at a street stall and confesses that she still doesn’t know the currency in which she will have to charge her customers from October 1. “It caught me by surprise because they haven’t told me anything yet,” the young merchant says.

Therefore, she believes that the day the digital bolivar comes into force “it will be a mess, mainly for the elderly, because they are always confused with the dollar, and now, with a different currency, they will be even more so.”

In a country where daily life changes so frequently in its most basic aspects, it is the elderly who find it hardest to adapt to new realities.

Parra explains that many are still confused by the 1 million bolivar bill (about 25 cents) launched last March, which, due to the continuous devaluation of the Venezuelan currency has virtually become obsolete.

Many, unfamiliar with the currency, see the 200 marked on the back, in homage to the bicentennial of the Carabobo battle, and do not know if that is the real value of the bill. “Sometimes they overpay me and I say ‘it’s wrong,'” she says.

What she shares with most of her fellow citizens is the forecast for the future of the new currency as a solution to the hyperinflation the country has been experiencing since 2017, which has run parallel to the currency’s constant devaluation.

At another point in Caracas, Oscar Bermudez agrees that what will come in 2 weeks is “more of the same” and fantasizes about what his life would have been like years ago, before reconversions, with a bill like the ones circulating in the streets today.

However, today he can only pay “the ticket, the bus” with “1 million bolivars, which will become 1 bolivar” as of October 1, after the 6 zeros are eliminated.

María, 84 years old, whose pension amounts to “US$2 in total,” that is, about 8 digital bolívares in 2 weeks, makes the same exchange but without smiles, and explains that this is not “enough to buy even a pill of anything.”

“I think that the same thing that happened with the previous reconversions is going to happen now, that it comes to nothing because with this inflation no new banknote is worth anything,” she says, before going about her day.

A day in which little time is dedicated to thinking about what form or value the coins will have in 2 weeks and in which, as for most of her compatriots, doubts arising from the new economic measure are covered by indifference to a currency from which they expect little.