Venezuelan government official: Petro is a scam

• Venezuelan retailers aren’t accepting Petro as payment means as hyperinflation is causing devaluation of petro during liquidation.
• With Bolivar losing almost all its value, merchants see their Petro stash liquidated at an alarming rate.

According to Tal Cual, a Venezuelan media platform, retailers and merchants in the nation have dismissed Petro as a payment method. Reportedly, merchants who attempted to liquidate their Petro stash at the Bank of Venezuela have received devalued Bolivar amounts.

The reason for this is because the Bank or Venezuela used the petro rate at the time of purchase. With the Bolivar losing almost all of its value over the past year, the merchants are seeing their Petro holdings liquidated at an alarming rate. The executive director of Consecomercio (Venezuela’s National Council of Commerce and Services) Josefina Salvatierra, commented on the scenario. 

The few who are liquidating are doing so to the indicator of the moment in which the sale was made, which obviously aggravates the situation even more because in a hyperinflationary process it is very difficult to sell on credit without practically indexing the debt.

Salvatierra says that retailers who accept Petro payments risk being unable to restock their inventories due to hyperinflation in the country. According to the local report, former President of Consecomercio, María Carolina Uzcátegui, called petro a scam. 

The petro is a scam for the merchant, because undoubtedly what he could do at the beginning of the year with that money is not the same thing he can do at this time.