While the cause of the protests that have swept across Venezuela is president Nicolás Maduro’s plan to rewrite the country’s constitution, the clashes come against a backdrop of collapsing living standards, medicine shortages, increasing international isolation and ballooning corruption. A look at the numbers reveals the rapid changes that have drastically reshaped life in the oil-rich South American nation. Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) EmailShare this chart Ninety-three per cent of Venezuelans said their income was not sufficient to buy the food they need, according to a survey by some of the country’s top universities. Nearly three-in-four Venezuelans reported suffering weight loss last year, and, of those, a 9kg loss on average. The price of basic groceries for a family is currently about 15 times the minimum wage and prices continue to rise. The International Monetary Fund projects Venezuela’s inflation rate could reach 720 per cent this year. Maritza Landaeta, a director of the Bengoa Foundation, a Caracas-based health and nutrition charity, recently said: “Malnutrition in Venezuela is a problem of corruption, not a lack of money.” Government price controls and other policies have crippled domestic production, and after the oil price drop caused imports to decrease dramatically, insufficient food is available for the country’s more than 30m people. Food shortages became so drastic that Coca-Cola ceased production in Venezuela in 2016 because there was not enough sugar.