(Miami Herald) Venezuela’s inflation rate, already by far the world’s highest, spiked from 4,966 percent to nearly 18,000 percent in just March and April — a trend that, if it continues, could push the country’s annual rate to more than 100,000 percent by year’s end, economists say.

The 17,968 percent rate registered at the end of April already surpassed the 13,864 percent rate predicted by the International Monetary Fund for all of 2018.

“What we’re seeing at this point is a giant jump in inflation,” Steve Hanke, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and one of the world’s top experts on inflation, told el Nuevo Herald.