Venezuelan economy shrank 12 pct in first quarter - congress

CARACAS, (Reuters) - Venezuela’s economy contracted 12 percent in the first three months of this year compared with the same quarter of 2017, the opposition-led congress said yesterday, in another dramatic indication of the OPEC nation’s unraveling.

The government of President Nicolas Maduro stopped publishing economic indicators nearly three years ago as Venezuela’s socialist economic system started falling apart, so opposition legislators started doing their own calculations for economic activity last year.