Traders boosted their bets on a Venezuela default as state oil company known as PDVSA faces a $2 billion bond payment next week, Bloomberg News reported. The implied probability of nonpayment in the next 12 months surged to 56 percent in March from 40 percent in February, according to credit-default swaps data compiled by Bloomberg.

The bitter political standoff between Venezuela’s government and opposition may have cost the crisis-torn country nearly half a billion dollars in loans from one of its last active multilateral lenders as a fourth year of recession grips the economy, Bloomberg News reported. The Development Bank of Latin America, or CAF, is said to be reconsidering whether to issue fresh loans to Venezuela -- a principal member and home to its headquarters -- due to a legal dispute between the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Just how much do you trust Venezuela? That’s the question to ask as $2 billion of bonds from the state-owned oil company that come due next month trade at about 95 cents on the dollar, Bloomberg News reported. Traders with nerves of steel might be able to bank a quick profit if all goes well and Petroleos de Venezuela SA honors the debt. But there’s always the chance that won’t happen. Venezuela investors have been on default watch for years now, racking up some of the world’s highest yields for dollar-denominated debt amidst the omnipresent threat that it will all go belly up at some point.

Traders reduced their bets on a default of Venezuela’s dollar debt over the next year amid a thin repayment schedule in the first quarter, Bloomberg News reported. The implied probability of nonpayment over the next 12 months plunged to 44 percent in January from 59 percent at the end of December, according to credit-default swaps data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the first time the risk of default has been below 50 percent since September. The longer-term outlook is still a little murky, with the odds of a credit event over the next five years at 89 percent.

A thousand abandoned concrete huts dot a plain beneath a remote mountain range here in western Venezuela, surrounded by empty, rusting silos and irrigation canals covered with weeds. This is the Diluvio agro-industrial commune, built with $2 billion of Venezuelan capital by Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht SA, which last month admitted to giving out almost $800 million in bribes to secure contracts in 12 countries, including Venezuela.

Carrying trash bags and backpacks filled with cash, Venezuelans fretfully lined up on Friday outside banks across the country to exchange currency that President Nicolás Maduro said would soon be void. Mr. Maduro’s decision that all 100-bolívar notes must be exchanged has caused panic, partly because the deadline keeps shifting and many banks and businesses are already refusing to accept them. For many people without bank accounts, the bills, which have long been the country’s highest-denomination note, are their primary means of saving money.

Venezuelans desperately rushed to banks Tuesday to dump cash after the government announced it is eliminating the largest circulating bank note to combat contraband in a country whipsawed by the world’s deepest recession and highest inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported. In the financial district of downtown Caracas, National Guard troops carrying assault rifles stood outside banks as crowds of people lined up to deposit stacks of 100-bolivar bills, which President Nicolás Maduro said Monday would become void on Wednesday night.

Venezuela, which has the largest crude reserves on the planet, has defied predictions of default since the oil collapse started in 2014, and analysts are split as to how long the nation of 30 million can hold out. With that in mind, Bloomberg is taking a close look each month at some of the key components that may determine its fate. After weeks of tense negotiations, state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela said last week that creditors holding $2.8 billion of bonds that come due over the next year agreed to extend maturities.

Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy has been hit by falling oil prices and what critics say is government mismanagement of state resources, reports Anatoly Kurmanaev, The Wall Street Journal Energy Journal blog reported. Oil accounts for 96% of the Latin American country’s exports. Venezuela’s crude production was 2.3 million barrels a day in September, 11% lower than a year earlier, according to government figures, and the consulting firm Medley & Associates expects the fall to accelerate in the next 12 months.

To most investors, Venezuela looks less like a market than a mess. The IMF expects output to shrink by 10% this year and inflation to exceed 700%, The Economist reported. As the bolívar’s value has plunged, multinational firms have announced billions of dollars of write-downs. For much of this year, however, some strong-stomached investors have scented an opportunity. They rushed to buy bonds issued by the government and by the state-owned oil company, PDVSA. They have been rewarded handsomely.