CARACAS: Gloomily watching their money shrink in value, Venezuelans don't need government statistics to tell them what they already know: their country is facing the looming risk of hyperinflation.
Breaking its own regulations, the Venezuelan central bank has stopped publishing the official inflation rate, which stood at 63.4 percent at the end of August.
Since then, prices have only continued to rise, as the South American oil giant feels the pinch of falling crude prices and struggles to import the food and medicine it largely buys abroad.
It is difficult to evaluate just how much value the bolivar has lost in recent months.
But one quick measure is the Extra Value menu at McDonald's: In September 2013, a Big Mac combo meal cost 125 bolivars; by November 2014, the price had nearly doubled, to 245 bolivars.
The US fast food giant is, paradoxically, a good place to track Venezuela's inflationary spiral.
For one thing, it remains popular with Venezuelans, despite anti-"Yankee-lover" diatribes by President Nicolas Maduro, the political heir to late socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez.
For another, it is one of the few food businesses not to have been hit by the shortages crippling the Venezuelan economy.
"We raise our prices practically every month," a McDonald's employee told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"We've never raised them as much as this year."
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