page_title: Hyperinflation in Venezuela
section_title: Exchange rate history
hierarchical_section_title: Hyperinflation in Venezuela / Exchange rate history
caption_attribution_description: English: The value of one US dollar in Venezuelan bolívares (VEF/VES) on the black market through time, according to DolarToday.com. Blue vertical lines represent every time the currency has lost 90% of its value relative to the US dollar since the last one. This has happened four times since 2012, meaning that the currency is worth, as of December 2017, less than one ten-thousandth of what it was worth five years ago, since it has lost 99.99% of its value. The rate at which the value is lost (inflation) is rapidly accelerating. The first time the money took 2 years and 2 months (an implied monthly inflation rate of 9.3%) to lose 90% of its value, the second time 1 year and 10 months (implied rate 11% m/m), the third time only 10 months (implied rate 26% m/m), and the fourth time a mere four months (implied rate 77% m/m).
context_page_description: Hyperinflation in Venezuela is the currency instability in Venezuela that began in 2016 during the country's ongoing socioeconomic and political crisis. Venezuela began experiencing continuous and uninterrupted inflation in 1983, with double-digit annual inflation rates. From 2006 to 2012, the government of Hugo Chávez reported decreasing inflation rates during the entire period. Inflation rates increased again in 2013 under Nicolás Maduro, and continued to increase in the following years, with inflation exceeding 1,000,000% by 2018. In comparison to previous hyperinflationary episodes, the ongoing hyperinflation crisis is more severe than those of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Peru in the 1980s and 1990s, and that of Zimbabwe in the late-2000s.
  In 2014, the annual inflation rate reached 69%, the highest in the world. In 2015, the inflation rate was 181%, again the highest in the world and the highest in the country's history at the time. The rate reached 800% in 2016, over 4,000% in 2017, and about 1,700,000% in 2018, with Venezuela spiraling into hyperinflation.
context_section_description: Under Venezuelan law, it is illegal to publish the "parallel exchange rate" in Venezuela. One popular website that has been publishing parallel exchange rates since 2010 is DolarToday, which has also been critical of the Maduro government. These tables and graphs show the exchange rate history of both the bolívar fuerte and the bolívar soberano compared to the United States dollar (USD) between 2012 and 2020.
caption: The value of one U.S. dollar in Venezuelan bolívares fuertes (before 20 August 2018) and bolívares soberanos on the parallel (or black) market through time. Vertical lines represent every time the currency has lost 90% of its value, which has happened eight times since 2012. The graph shows that as of March 2020, the currency is worth 750 million times less than it was worth in August 2012. Since the beginning of the presidential crisis in Venezuela in January 2019, the curve has been less steep than previously, meaning that the rate at which the value is lost, inflation, has slowed down.
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