Venezuela’s currency has lost so much value that people simply throw away their small bills — they are virtually worthless anyway.
Enter Wilmer Rojas, 25, who scoops them up off the street, uses an origami-like folding technique, a needle and thread to make handbags with an eye to selling them — maybe even abroad, where people have real money.
Rojas can use as many as 800 bills to make such a purse. If you add up the face value of all that money, it is enough to buy only half a kilogram of rice. Rojas and his wife have three kids to feed, and another is on the way.
Photo :AFP
“People throw them away because they are no good to buy anything. No one even accepts them anymore,” Rojas told reporters outside a subway station, where he also sells coffee and cigarettes in addition to his unusual bag-weaving work.
Meanwhile, inflation in the oil-rich, cash-poor economy churns on and on: Since August last year, the bolivar has lost 87 percent of its value against the euro. Inflation this year is forecast by the IMF to come in at a staggering 13,000 percent.
With two, five and 10-bolivar notes, “you can’t even buy a piece of candy,” Rojas said, explaining how he used 400 such bills to make a smaller handbag.
Rojas then pointed to a queen’s crown he made out of bolivar notes.
“Here there are about 50,000 bolivars [US$2], which is maybe enough for a pack of cigarettes,” he said.
Rojas said he learned his craft from another makeshift artist.
“You can use magazine paper or newspaper pulp, but currency notes are better because they are not worth anything, they are all the same size and you don’t have to waste time cutting them,” Rojas said.
He hopes to start selling his creations soon, but he fears that Venezuela’s economic crisis might foil his plans.
“Here, people barely have enough to put food on the table and are not going to shell out money for something that required a lot of work,” he said.
In downtown Caracas, other hungry artisans are selling woven bags like these. They get as much as 300,000 bolivars for one of them. That would buy 1 kilogram of meat.
That Venezuela’s currency is being used as play money is the ultimate expression of how much value it has lost, economist Tamara Herrera said.
With 1,000 two-bolivar notes that nobody wants, Jose Leon, a 26-year-old designer, began a protest on Instagram in 2016 that featured doctored notes and the hashtag #venezueladevaluada, or devalued Venezuela.
Deadpool, the anti-hero in the Marvel comics, was the inspiration for his first work on currency notes, using his face to replace that of independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Leon has also drawn the faces of Star Wars characters over that of Bolivar and other famous Venezuelans pictured on the notes.
Leon’s customers live abroad and pay him up to US$20 per piece of “money art.”
“With a bit of Wite-Out and some pens, I can raise the value of the currency by nearly 5,000 percent,” Leon said at his workshop in San Cristobal, a city on Venezuela’s border with Colombia.
Leon is doing well with his art, but Rojas is still struggling to make money — in the meantime, he is using notes to make a carnival costume for his daughter.
“These things are no good for buying anything. At least I am putting them to good use rather than throwing them away,” Rojas said.
Semiconductor stocks on Friday took a beating after a grim profit warning from Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc sparked fresh worries about the US’ earnings power as the country is potentially heading for a recession. Despite a broader stock market rally, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index dropped 3.8 percent after Micron, the largest maker of memory semiconductors in the US, flagged that demand was cooling for chips used in computers and smartphones. The index — which is home to US chip giants Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Nvidia Corp, as well as Micron — is down 38 percent this year. Historically, semiconductor
WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY: Costco Wholesale said it expected the purchase of the remaining 45 percent stake to add 1 to 1.5 percent to its earnings per share US-based Costco Wholesale Corp on Thursday said that it had purchased the remaining 45 percent stake in Costco President Taiwan Inc (台灣好市多) for US$1.05 billion, making the local company a fully-owned unit. “We estimate that the purchase would add about 1 to 1.5 percent to [our] earnings per share,” Costco said in a statement. Costco President Taiwan was established as a joint venture with Kaohsiung-based President Group (大統集團), which held a 45 percent stake. Since the first Costco store opened in Kaohsiung in 1997, 14 outlets have been set up in Taiwan, company data showed. PROFITABLE Three Costco stores in Taiwan — in Taipei’s Neihu
MOBILITY SOLUTIONS: Tata Technologies’ participation marks more progress in Hon Hai’s efforts to expand its ecosystem through the platform, the Taiwanese firm said India’s Tata Technologies Ltd has become the latest member of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) MIH Open Platform to jointly develop sustainable mobility solutions for customers worldwide, the Taiwanese company said yesterday. It might include embedded and electrical, electric platform development and battery management system solutions, among others, Hon Hai said. Tata Technologies’ participation marks more progress in Hon Hai’s efforts to expand its electric-vehicle (EV) ecosystem through the MIH platform, it said. The open platform has about 2,380 members around the world, with an aim to jointly develop EV ecosystems and shrink the time to market for products. Hon Hai made the
SOARING PROFITS: Semiconductors and shipping have knocked automaking and construction out of the 10 highest paying industries, stock exchange data showed Mobile phone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) posted an average of NT$5.15 million (US$173,249) in annual compensation for non-managerial employees last year, marking the highest among all firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE), exchange data showed. That is a 66 percent increase from the company’s average compensation of NT$3.08 million in 2020, as its earnings per share (EPS) expanded from NT$26.01 in 2020 to NT$70.56 last year. That is also three times higher than the average compensation of NT$1.7 million in the nation’s semiconductor industry, the data showed. The increases helped MediaTek advance its ranking from third in 2020, replacing