Imagine living in an economy where barter is the currency and where you have to pay food items such bananas or eggs for something as small as a haircut. That's exactly what is happening in Venezuela.
In the hyperinflationary South American country, where bank notes are as difficult to find as chronically scarce food and medicine, Venezuelans are increasingly relying on to barter for basic transactions.
Once the richest country of Latin America, Venezuela - a country that sits on world's largest oil reserves - today stares at a bleak future. People in this oil-rich country are scrambling for money, food and basic necessities, swapping different items and even doing chores for packages of flour, rice and cooking oil.
"There is no cash here, only barter," said Mileidy Lovera, 30, while hoping to trade a cooler of fish that her husband had caught for food to feed her four children, or medicine to treat her son's epilepsy.
What's the problem?
Venezuela is seeing dearth of cash. Payment for even the cheapest of goods and services would require unwieldy piles of banknotes, and there simply are not enough of those in circulation.
While formal businesses in cities can get by on bank transfers and debit cards, such operations are largely out of the question in rural areas.
The rise of barter exchange, amid hyperinflation and a severe cash crunch, is a reflection of how the once-prosperous country is reverting to the most rudimentary of mechanisms of commercial exchange.
How did it all began?
The economic crisis in Venezuela has spiked in past few months.
The economic collapse, which began under President Nicolas Maduro's government, has driven nearly one million people - 3 percent of the population - to emigrate between 2015 and 2017.
Maduro, re-elected to a fresh six-year term in May in elections condemned by the United States, blames spiraling consumer prices and constant shortages of food and medicine on an "economic war" led by the opposition and Washington.
What experts say
Economists say the central bank has not printed bills fast enough to keep up with inflation, which according to the opposition-run congress, reached an annual rate of almost 25,000 percent in May.
It's a very primitive payment system but it's also very primitive for a country not to have enough cash available," said Luis Vicente Leon, an economist.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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