Among the economic challenges facing Venezuela, the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, experts say the worst is sustained high inflation.

Venezuela has registered a string of staggering inflation figures in recent years, with the number standing above 20 percent for six consecutive years since 2008.

Despite the national government's positive forecasts for 2013, which predicts the inflation this year will remain between 14 and 16 percent, experts believe that high inflation has become a structural problem in the country and can not be easily solved.

In an interview with Xinhua, local economists Luis Oliveros and Luis Zambrano agreed that Venezuela will see remarkable rise in prices this year at a comparable level to that of the past few years.

"We're going to have inflation that should not be lower than 25 percent, between 25 and 30. Many people talk about 30, but I think due to weakening consumption it will be closer to 25, maybe 27 percent," said Oliveros.

Meanwhile, Zambrano put his predictions between 30 and 32 percent.

High inflation is not a recent problem in Venezuela but has its root in failed policies decades ago, experts explained.x

Venezuela's financial system was hit twice in 1974 and 1978 respectively following huge influx of oil revenue. The inflow of foreign currency unexpectedly altered the fiscal policy of the country and later led to serious economic imbalance.

"The Venezuelan inflation problem is intimately linked with the loss of fiscal discipline and the exchange rate policy," said Zambrano, also a university professor.

"There is a connection, from which, upon loss of fiscal discipline, the anchor of exchange rate is also lost. Thus (the country) entered a dynamic that has lasted many decades, inflation-devaluation, a cycle that could hardly be reversed," he added.

Since early 1980s, Venezuela has faced high inflation, with average annual inflation rate at 12 percent. The figure even rocketed to 103 percent in 1996.

Factors such as high public spending, price caps and controls on exchange rates jointly led to drastic devaluation of the Venezuelan currency, the Bolivar.

"Every time it devaluates, a large amount of bolivars will be generated from nothing. And the government will have most of them. Then, the government will support their spending with the newly-generated cash. That ultimately leads to liquidity expansion," Zambrano said.

In addition, the country's bid to nationalize various industry sectors has discouraged private investment and undermined domestic productivity.These are also considered important factors behind Venezuela's runaway inflation.

"On the one hand you have a serious problem of supply of goods, on the other hand demand has been growing significantly in recent years," said Oliveros.

"Today the country only produces a small part of the goods it needs, and the government's anti-inflation policy is mainly focusing on price controls of imports," he added.

Despite the controls, inflation, which in 2012 seemed to be declining, accelerated in January and February and reached 4.6 percent, a level that the South American countries such as Colombia and Brazil could achieve in a year.

The government decided to devalue its currency in February, from 4.3 to 6.3 bolivars to a dollar.

"The biggest losers are the poor people, obviously. Those who are more dependent on a fixed income, those who have no means to pass the burdens of cost increases to others are suffering," Zambrano said.

There is consensus among economists that Venezuela must change its economic model, Oliveros said. "We can not continue with this boom of imports, we can not continue the heavy hand on the private sector," he said.