Venezuela's Inflation Tops 50 Percent

Central bank stops releasing data in response

Venezuela's economic distress is so acute that the central bank stopped releasing regular statistics for the first time ever, threatening to increase borrowing costs further as the nation faces $10 billion of financing needs.

"This is not the right way to manage macroeconomic data," Benjamin Wang, a money manager at PineBridge Investments LLC, which oversees $5 billion of emerging-market debt and holds Venezuelan bonds, said by telephone from New York. "There's no transparent data to measure the risk."

Yields on Venezuela's sovereign bonds surged in the past year to 13.97 percent, the highest among 50 emerging markets tracked by JPMorgan Chase & Co., as consumer prices soared the most in the world and President Nicolas Maduro vowed to radicalize the Socialist Revolution started by his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, to combat enemies of the nation's economy.