Caracas (AFP)

How to pay his children 12 pencils when the minimum wage does not reach 3 dollars? For Venezuelan parents, back to school can be summed up in a two-variable equation: depreciation of the currency and 7-digit hyperinflation.

"Everything is ultra expensive," complains 57-year-old Asiscla Velasquez, glancing at the list of school supplies for her 13-year-old granddaughter who is returning to college on Monday, like all students in the country.

In Venezuela, the pre-season races are mostly racing against the clock. The more parents wait before buying pencils, notebooks and binders, the more their purchase power in bolivars, the Venezuelan currency. For proof: between July and September the dollar went from 6,721 to more than 21,200 bolivars.

And while the nominal value of wages paid in bolivars remains the same, the prices of goods sold in bolivars explode: inflation should even reach 1,000,000% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

So, the feeble teacher school retreat that touches Asiscla Velasquez is not even enough to buy the notebooks that her granddaughter needs.

"Real wages are being shattered," says economist Jesus Casique, director of Capital Market Finance. And the outlook is not good, according to him, in this country where the minimum monthly salary is equivalent to about $ 1.40 plus a "good food" of $ 1.20 ...

Until recently, Asiscla Velasquez considered sharpeners, glue and other felts as "trinkets" she bought "without any problem".

To help her son stay afloat and pay for her granddaughter's school fees, she gives private lessons to her classmates.

- Money bank -

"Some people get scared" by seeing the prices, says Royner Vasquez, school supplies salesman in a market in Caracas. And he recognizes it: sales have gone down.

In an attempt to cope, Socialist President Nicolas Maduro this week approved the release of the equivalent of $ 130 million to equip schools and another three million for the purchase of school bags or notebooks distributed free to students.

But the bottom of the affair, the very serious recession Venezuela is going through, is far from being solved.

Venezuela suffers from the plunge in oil production, which accounts for 97% of its revenues, and the range of economic sanctions that the US administration has taken to put Nicolas Maduro under pressure. GDP contracted by 47.6% between 2013 and 2018.

And, to offset the public deficit - between 12 and 14% of GDP this year - the government has printed money, which blew up inflation, according to the economist Jesus Casique.

Earlier this year, the government took a series of measures to reduce liquidity and further eased the exchange controls it has maintained since 2003 to try to capture foreign currency.

- The "remesas" lifebuoy -

For a while, inflation and the depreciation of the bolivar slowed somewhat, but they started again in the spring.

For Venezuelans, often the "remesas", the money sent by their relatives living abroad, are the only lifeline. They represent about $ 3 billion a year, according to independent estimates.

It is thanks to the "remesas" that Elba Seijas raises the 9-year-old daughter of a friend who tries to try her luck abroad, like the 3.6 million Venezuelans who have left the country since 2016. Without the " remesas "sent by the mother of the girl, explains Elba, it would be" impossible "to buy school supplies.

But the dollar is not a panacea either: according to the firm Ecoanalitica, the purchasing power of the greenback in Venezuela has been divided by 10 since 2018.

© 2019 AFP