Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro issued the government's 2017 budget by decree Friday, bypassing the opposition-held legislature in a move that could deepen the country's economic crisis.
"Here is the 2017 budget and debt law. May it be fulfilled. I ask for the support of the people, the military and the street," Maduro said at a signing ceremony in Caracas attended by hundreds of supporters.
The move came a day after Venezuela's Supreme Court - which the opposition says is stacked with Maduro supporters - ruled that the leftist leader did not have to submit his budget to the National Assembly, despite a constitutional requirement to do so.
The court said the ruling aimed to "maintain the functioning of the state, the guarantee of fundamental rights and constitutional order."
The court has said that the National Assembly is in contempt because it has sworn in three opposition legislators whose election is still being challenged amid allegations of fraud.
Maduro said the decree was necessary because "there is no National Assembly," but rather "a political forum operating in contempt of court."
The president and the National Assembly have been locked in battle since the center-right opposition took control of the legislature in January, ending the left's 17-year monopoly on power.
The South American OPEC member's oil-dependent economy has plunged in tandem with global crude prices in the past two years.
The new budget is based on an oil price of $30 a barrel, which Maduro called a conservative estimate.
It allocates 73.6 percent of spending to social programs and comes with a law to limit new government debt.
Jose Guerra, the lawmaker who heads the National Assembly's budget commission, said the legislature would reject the budget.
"We are going to tell the government that this is an illegal budget," he warned.
He said the Assembly would "call on financial institutions to abstain" from lending money to the government, because state debt requires approval from the legislature.
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