Although President Nicolás Maduro highlighted that the minimum wage would get connected to the value of the petro (it would run in parallel with half a petro), the Venezuelan National Gazette does not mention de digital asset.
This week, Decree No. 4,653 was published in Venezuela’s Official Gazette 6,691, dated March 15, 2021, which sets up the salary increase, which is set at 130 bolivars, equivalent to this date just over 28 dollars monthly. Not only did the mandatory monthly minimum wage experiences a boost, the amount of Retirement and Pensions also did face a change.
The curious thing about the case is that, even though the national president, Nicolás Maduro, had explicitly said that the minimum wage would get linked to the digital government currency, the petro, the coin does not have an establishment in the Official Gazette.
The Petro was the unit of account for calculating this minimum wage. Still, since its position in the Official Gazette is unclear, the compensation would not experience any increase if the value of the petro grows.
This publication, then, would not echo the statements made by Nicolás Maduro, who highlighted that the minimum wage would experience an increase in parallel to half a petro, linking the value of this monthly minimum wage to the value of the digital currency.
The Petro Suddenly Disappeared
Of course, the decree caused a wave of criticism from the Venezuelan citizens since the amount is much less than the basic basket’s current value, which got estimated at 353 dollars for February of this year, according to the Venezuelan Finance Observatory (OVF).
This decree and the lack of parity between this monthly minimum wage caused workers a whole wave of reactions. One of these negative reactions came from Pedro Eusse, the current General Coordinator of the National Front for the Working Class Struggle; he openly expressed that this increase became an unprecedented disappointment when discovering that there is no such anchorage to the petro because it doesn’t appear in the Official Gazette.
Eusse further stated that The government previously promised that they would anchor the salary at half a petro, which is a digital currency that experiences increases along with the price of oil.
For his part, Franklin Rondón, current deputy to the National Assembly, the country’s legislative entity, said about this case, that petro only served as a unit to lead a measure, and that this does not mean that the minimum wage increases every time this digital currency increases in value.
By: Jenson Nuñez
