Maduro raises Venezuelan wages 50 per cent as inflation soars

BUSINESS

Maduro raises Venezuelan wages 50 per cent as inflation soars

The Associated Press Published Sunday, January 8, 2017 4:14PM EST

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro listens to the playing of national hymns as he welcomes regional leaders to Miraflores presidential palace for an emergency ALBA meeting in Caracas, Venezuela on March 17, 2015. (AP / Ariana Cubillos)

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BOGOTA - President Nicolas Maduro is raising Venezuela's minimum wage by 50 per cent.

But that's not very much relief in a nation where inflation is forecast by the International Monetary Fund to reach four digits this year and food shortages are widespread.

Maduro announced Sunday on his weekly TV program that the nation's monthly minimum wage and mandatory food subsidy would be 104,358 bolivars.

That's just around $30 on the widely used black market rate, where the battered currency plunged in 2016 in the face of four wage wage increases.

The raise comes as Maduro tries to persuade the opposition to abandon calls for his removal and continue participating in Vatican-sponsored negotiations designed to ease the nation's economic and political crisis.