CARACAS (Reuters) - Latin American development bank CAF said it had approved a $400million credit line to cash-strapped Venezuela’s central bank, sparking the fury of the opposition which on Wednesday accused the lender of financing a dictatorship.
Caracas-based CAF said in a statement on its website that the credit line would help ensure regional stability and “contribute to guaranteeing the stability of imports in the country.”
Oil-rich Venezuela has been hard-hit by the fall in the price of oil and is undergoing a brutal economic crisis that has caused shortages of food, medicine, and basic products as Nicolas Maduro’s government struggles to import enough goods for the country of 30 million.
The opposition, which has been lobbying Wall Street to stop financing leftist Maduro, slammed the move.
“This is incomprehensible,” opposition lawmaker and economist Angel Alvarado said on Wednesday. “The country isn’t in a position to take on more debt and the president of the central bank has not been ratified by the (opposition-led) congress. They are financing a dictatorship.”
Reporting by Corina Pons; Additional reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Sandra Maler
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