gradually to ease the pain. to a different kind of pain as falling oil prices combined with political unrest and corruption have decimated venezuela's economy there are a chronic shortages of food and medicine inflation is set to hit two thousand three hundred percent this year the president throwing a bone to the working poor hiking the minimum wage but that won't help much as the local currency the ball of is what next to nothing. basile president nicolas maduro made the announcement on new year's eve on the issue is i'm announcing an increase of forty percent of the national minimum wage and of all salary scales nationwide of teachers military police doctors public workers a lot of political. but still only brings the full time minimum wage to just under eight hundred thousand baht of r.'s