Half of children in oil-rich Venezuela are receiving a maximum of two meals a day, making it hard for them to attend school, a new survey has found.

The findings by More Consulting, a research firm, found that 50 per cent of parents were only feeding their children one or two meals a day as a result of food shortages caused by an ongoing financial crisis.

Venezuela has some of the world largest oil reserves but has been left reeling by the collapse in world crude prices and decades of economic mismanagement by socialist governments founded by the late charismatic leader Hugo Chazez.

Nicolas Maduro, who took over from Chavez, is facing mounting criticism after hosting a Non-Aligned Movement summit worth millions of dollars last weekend, and was recently heard to joke about the benefits of the “Maduro diet”.

With inflation forecast to hit 480% this year, ordinary citizens face spending hours in supermarket queues to purchase subsidised goods, leaving those who cannot afford the prices to sift rubbish dumps for food.

The survey was conducted from a national sample of 767 parents throughout the country ahead of the new school year which starts on September 26 leaving both politicians, parents and teachers fretting over the future of the country’s children.