Venezuela state oil firm's earnings fall 4.3% in 2014

Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA's earnings fell 4.3 percent in 2014, it said Monday, reporting drops in production and exports after a year of economic upheaval and sliding crude prices.

PDVSA, which dominates the oil industry in the country estimated to have the world's largest crude reserves, registered earnings of $128.4 billion last year, down from $134.3 billion the year before, it reported on its website.

Production meanwhile fell four percent, to 2.78 million barrels per day, and exports 2.8 percent, to 2.35 million barrels a day, it said.

Venezuela is struggling with a prolonged recession and chronic shortages of the panoply of basic goods it relies on oil money to import, from food to medicine to toilet paper.

President Nicolas Maduro's government is struggling to come up with badly needed cash in the face of a global supply glut that caused oil prices to collapse by more than 50 percent between June and January.

Oil exports provide 96 percent of Venezuela's foreign currency.