Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has devised an efficient solution to the economic and political turmoil in his country. The oil-rich nation is facing hunger riots of the civil population, armed clashes with the opposition, escalating international sanctions, a slump in the national currency etc.
Speaking at the National Constituent Assembly in Caracas on September 7, the President announced that Venezuela would seek to unpeg itself from the US dollar, using a basket of currencies. “Venezuela is going to implement a new system of international payments and will create a basket of currencies to free us from the dollar,” Maduro said in a long speech to a new legislative body. The political leader explained that the new currency basket would include the Russian ruble, the yuan, the yen, the Indian rupee, and the euro. Interestingly, no comments have followed either from India, or China, or the eurozone, or even Russia. The latter occasionally brings up the issue of creating alternatives to the US dollar. Surprisingly, Venezuela’s government seems to neglect severe unrest that has been going on for over half a year. Meanwhile, Nicolas Maduro is more worried about the standoff between him and the opposition which won the majority in the Parliament after the election.
The culprit of the conflict is a major economic crisis which broke out amid a fall in global oil prices. The domestic economy is entirely dependent on oil exports. As a result, millions of people are suffering food and medicine shortages and the world’s highest inflation. The national currency plummeted to record lows. Amid a deep recession, the president focuses on more important issues, the alternative to the US dollar!
