Venezuelan Central Bank blames inflation on “radical political opposition”

The Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) has firmly adopted the government’s narrative of recent events in the country.

The long delayed inflation report for March, titled “Effect of the recrudescence of the ‘economic war’ on inflation,” was published today. Before informing that the Consumer Prices National Index (INPC) gained 4.1% last month, the BCV offered this explanation for the rise:

2013 was a year of permanent acts of political destabilization, associated a speculative phenomenon, which altered national production and provoked scarcity and inflationary pleasures.

…a radical group from the opposition, guided by its urge to gain power by any means, without consideration for constitutional order or the will of the people, did not doubt putting into action various initiatives to generate political destabilization, promote political tensions, produce a climate of chaotic political and of economic unease that would stimulate social insurrection, and even provoke the intervention of their foreign allies.

(…) These irrational practices produced a series of consequences in terms of the behavior of the variable associated with the productions and the prices of goods, particularly of food.

For example, a rise of 4.1% of the INPC was registered in the month of March, and there is a serious tendency that [the events] will continue to impact the results for the month of April.