Jan 2015 Financial News

IMF: Venezuela economy to shrink seven per cent this year

Jan 22, 2015

CARACAS—The International Monetary Fund is predicting Venezuela’s troubled economy will shrink by seven per cent in 2015, suffering the worst contraction in Latin America. It’s a dramatic downgrade from October, when the IMF said Venezuela’s economy would shrink by one per cent.

In a post published yesterday, IMF Western Hemisphere Director Alejandro Werner says Venezuela will be clobbered by falling oil prices, which have declined by half in the last six months. Oil accounts for more than 95 per cent of the South American country’s export earnings.

Werner says that the Argentine economy will also shrink, but by less than two per cent, and predicts that overall growth for Latin America and the Caribbean will hold steady at slightly more than one per cent. Werner says the recession in Venezuela will lead to worsening shortages. (AP)

Source:
Trinidad Guardian
Thursday January 22, 2015

http://www.guardian.co.tt/business/2015-01-22/imf-venezuela-economy-shrink-seven-cent-year