According to Reuters, affected by U.S. sanctions and exclusion from the official foreign exchange allocation system, small and medium-sized enterprises in Venezuela are facing a severe dollar shortage crisis, with more than half of surveyed companies stating that foreign exchange scarcity has seriously hindered production. It is reported that against the backdrop of a 13% year-on-year decline in foreign exchange auction scale at the beginning of the year, most dollar quotas are monopolized by large multinational enterprises. To maintain production, a large number of local pharmaceutical and chemical companies have been forced to turn to unofficial markets or use cryptocurrencies for cross-border raw material procurement and settlement. This has consequently led to soaring local prices and pushed inflation rates to as high as 600%.