Weekly Report - 04 May 2023 (WR-23-18)

VENEZUELA | Disappointing start to 2023 for Venezuela’s economy. The Observatorio Venezolano de Finanzas (OVF), an economic think tank, has estimated that economic activity in Venezuela fell by 8.3% in the first quarter of 2023, compared with the same period in 2022. The OVF said that the decrease can be explained by a “deceleration in the production of goods and services which had been increasing since the second quarter of 2022”.