Retailers in Venezuela refuse to accept payments in the digital currency Petro, because hyperinflation has caused a significant drop in the value of the currency when liquidated in banks.

At the same time, the country’s government has reappointed price control inspectors as part of efforts to pressure stores to accept the state-issued digital currency.

Petro coin is a scam:

According to the Venezuelan media platform “As is” The country’s merchants have abandoned the petro as a means of payment.

Reports say that merchants who tried to liquidate their petro holdings in the Bank of Venezuela received reduced amounts of bolívars.

The reason for this reduction is that the central bank used the petro rate at the time of purchase.

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With the bolivar losing nearly 99% of its value in 2019 alone, traders are seeing the petro being liquidated by the equivalent of cents in the dollar.

Commenting on the situation, Josefina Salvatierra, Executive Director of Consecomercio, the Venezuelan National Council for Trade and Services in Venezuela, said:

The few who liquidate do this on the indicator of the moment when the sale was made, which clearly aggravates the situation because in the process of hyperinflation it is very difficult to sell on credit without practically indexing the debt.

According to Salvaterra, merchants who accept the petro as payment risk not being able to store their money due to the high inflation in the country.

While former Consecomercio president, Maria Carolina Ozkantegui, went so far as to describe the Petro cryptocurrency as a scam, according to the local report.

The Petro coin is a scam for merchants, because there is no doubt that what he can do at the beginning of this year with this money is not the same as what he can do at the end of the year.

Maduro’s administration reintroduces the “price policy”:

It is possible that Venezuelan retailers and the government will soon clash over the Petro currency with the Maduro administration, which has decided to appoint a “price police.”

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According to the newspaper The Wall Street JournalThe government assigns a team of inspectors the task of enforcing price controls across the country.

For the government, the move is part of efforts to curb hyperinflation.

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Yet critics point to the policy of imposing Petro acceptance as further evidence of Maduro’s attempts to tighten his control over the country’s economy.

Retailers who ditched the state’s petro would deal a heavy blow to the government’s goal of ensuring widespread use of the new currency.

As we mentioned earlier on Arab bitcoin site President Maduro ordered airlines operating in the country’s capital, Caracas, to buy aviation fuel using the Petro currency.

The country has also tried to incorporate “petro” into foreign trade deals with Russia and India.

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