Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro announced the creation of a Ministry of Interior Commerce on Sunday that he claims will “unify” the country’s private and public sectors.
During an address on Sunday, Maduro said that the idea was based on proposals drawn up by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which aim to create “the governing body to unify the internal market and the country’s internal commercial operations” with the help of expert economists.
The decision was reportedly unpopular among some sections of the party opposed to expanding the regime’s bureaucracy, and it is not known how the ministry will operate and who will be in charge.
Maduro also revealed a range of economic reforms that he hopes will revitalize and modernize Venezuela’s troubled economy. These include a restructuring of Minerven, the country’s state-run gold mining company, and a new electronic payment system for pensions.
“I have decreed a deep and complete restructuring of the company Minerven, which has many internal vices, so that it produces all the gold that the country needs,” he said.”From now on every month we are going to pay pensions through the digital wallet, so that older adults do not have problems and have their resources freely.”
Maduro also announced that he would be ending the country’s longstanding gas subsidy for foreigners, whom he claims are cheating the country out of millions of dollars. Venezuelans will now be forced to provide identity cards to buy gas in border states next to Brazil and Colombia.
“Even above the international prices and the subsidy will be direct for the vehicle, for the family,” he said. “We will have modalities for the system of collection of gasoline, one for the towns near the border at an international price, even well above that and one for the rest of the states of the country.”
Such economic reforms are part of Maduro’s plan to revive Venezuela’s economy, although experts expect them to have little effect. Last week, the government introduced a parallel currency, known as the “sovereign bolívar,” as a measure intended to reduce hyperinflation, while also increasing the country’s minimum wage by 3,500 percent.
Such reforms are expected to spiral inflation further out of control. The International Monetary Fund has warned that inflation could exceed one million percent by the end of 2017. The move has also placed enormous pressure on private businesses, who are now forced to implement steep wage hikes that will only increase the prices of their products, most of which are already unaffordable for most Venezuelans.
Thousands of Venezuelans are now fleeing the country every day in what is rapidly deteriorating into a major migration crisis. Last week, spokesperson for the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration warned that the crisis was reaching “Mediterranean” proportions comparable to the ongoing migrant influx into Europe.
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