Farmers brought parts of Uruguay to a standstill this week demanding the government help them recover unpaid bills from Venezuela in the latest sign that the crisis-ravaged South American country may soon renege on it debts. In spite of Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro reassuring bond investors that he will make good on more than $10bn of payments this year, economists say default is “practically inevitable” as prices for oil, the Caribbean country’s lifeblood, plummet. Crude oil accounts for 96 per cent of export revenues and falling prices, coupled with years of mismanagement, have crushed the country’s economy. A sell-off in sovereign bonds has pushed the price on benchmark 2026 debt to 37 cents in the dollar, a level considered a precursor to default. The cost of insuring Venezuelan bonds has tripled in the past 12 months. Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimate that the recovery value on Venezuela’s $123bn of external debt could be as low as 21 per cent if current low oil prices persist.