MEXICO CITY/ CARACAS: Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro on Friday asked central bank head Nelson Merentes to
step down, two sources close to the matter told Reuters.
"The request for
him to step down was made this afternoon," said one of the sources linked
to the government.
It was not immediately
clear why Merentes, a mathematician by training who has led the bank since 2009
except during a stint as Finance Minister in 2013, was asked to leave or who
might replace him.
Venezuela´s central
bank and Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Oil-rich Venezuela is
in the throes of a brutal economic crisis.
Consumer prices rose
800 percent in 2016 while the economy contracted by 18.6 percent, Reuters
reported earlier on Friday, citing previously undisclosed central bank figures.
As Venezuela´s economy
has tanked, the central bank has stopped releasing quarterly and monthly
economic indicators.
Long seen as a
pragmatic figure, Merentes, who completed a PhD.
in mathematics in
Budapest in 1991 before returning to Venezuela as a university professor, has
disappointed economists by not pushing through major reforms in the
Socialist-led OPEC country.
Analysts say that
Venezuela´s floundering economy will not return to growth this year until it
lifts corruption-riddled exchange controls and dysfunctional price control
system, and rolls back hundreds of nationalisations that have left many
industries unproductive for the last so many years.
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