If the devalued exchange rate had been applied to last year’s Venezuela revenues, the company said, they would have shrunk by 88 percent and the operating profit for the entire company would have fallen by 31 percent.

Further complicating the picture, the Venezuelan government has not allowed companies to repatriate profits for the last five years.

Companies have ways of chipping away at the locked-up profits, including charging higher fees to Venezuelan subsidiaries for goods and services provided by the parent corporation. But many foreign companies are stuck holding vast troves of bolívares that shrink in value each time there is a devaluation.

Procter & Gamble said in April that it had the equivalent of about $900 million in cash in this country and that it was taking a $275 million write-down as a result of applying the government’s intermediate exchange rate to its Venezuelan balance sheet. Colgate-Palmolive wrote down $174 million, while Ford wrote down about $316 million.

“All the companies knew there would be a loss because everyone knew there wouldn’t be dollars” available at the fixed exchange rate, said an executive with an American company in Venezuela who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We were trapped because the law here did not give you a way out.”

The currency controls have only tightened over the last year, making it increasingly difficult for companies to obtain the dollars they need to import goods, services, parts or other materials. The government has also failed to pay companies the hard currency it had promised them for imports bought on credit from suppliers, and in many cases suppliers are now refusing to ship more goods to Venezuela until they receive payment.