Venezuela: Continua la pagliacciata valutaria del Bolivar

[Amati75]

Venezuela Bonds Plunge After Bolivar Weakened For Travel

Venezuela devalued its currency for airline ticket purchases and foreign direct investment to halt a hemorrhaging of dollars that has pushed international reserves to a 10-year low. Bonds fell.
Airlines, Venezuelans traveling abroad and foreigners sending remittances home must use a secondary exchange rate determined at weekly auctions, Economy Vice President Rafael Ramirez said yesterday. The rate set at the latest auction was 11.36 bolivars per dollar, compared with the official rate of 6.3. The announcement came as the country’s largest private food producer, Empresas Polar SA, said it can’t import more raw materials because authorities are delaying the release of dollars.
The country’s benchmark dollar bond due in 2027 fell to 69.53 cents on the dollar at 8:16 a.m. in New York, extending losses on the South American nation’s debt to 5 percent this year, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s EMBIG index. The yield on the securities rose 91 basis points to 14.41 percent, the highest since November 2011.
“The market has been hoping for a more clear-cut devaluation that showed the government is serious about addressing the increasingly acute macroeconomic imbalances,” Ben Ramsey, an economist at JPMorgan, said yesterday in an e-mailed response to questions. “The implementation of a multi-tiered, discretionary system has been difficult to decipher, especially with the government trying to emphasize that they are maintaining the 6.3 rate.”
Indirect Devaluation

Increasing the amount of dollars that get exchanged at the weaker exchange rate amounts to an indirect devaluation, according to Barclays Plc.
“The government has done too little and too late to reduce the currency distortions,” the bank’s economist, Alejandro Grisanti, said. “This partial devaluation means more money printing by the central bank to finance the government.”
Since taking office in April, President Nicolas Maduro has struggled to boost growth and rein in inflation in a country with the world’s biggest oil reserves. Consumer prices rose 56 percent last year even as government price regulators backed by troops forced more than 1,000 businesses to cut prices on everything from toys to electronics.
The country’s international reserves fell to $20.5 billion this month from more than $28 billion a year ago.
Black Market

Without access to dollars at the official rate, many companies and individuals turn to the illegal black market, where the bolivar weakened to about 79 per dollar yesterday, according to dolartoday.com, a website the tracks the exchange rate on the Colombian border.
Maduro’s government sold $8.6 billion last year to finance travel, airlines and remittances, 19 percent more than in 2012, according to Ramirez.
Measured at the official rate, airlines have an equivalent of $3.3 billion in bolivars in Venezuela that they can’t expatriate because of exchange controls, according to the International Air Transport Association. Payment delays led Madrid-based Air Europa to suspend sales this month, while other airlines have reduced sales in bolivars.
Ecuador’s Tame Linea Aerea suspended indefinitely all of its seven weekly flights from Caracas today because of payment delays from the central bank, company spokeswoman Janneth Vega said by telephone from Quito today.
Honoring Debts

After previous devaluations, the government honored the old rates for existing debts with carriers, said Humberto Figuera, president of the Venezuelan Airline Association. Ramirez said the government will review the rates for its debts with the private sector.
The central bank stopped publishing scarcity statistics in November, after the previous month’s data showed that more than one in five basic goods was out of stock at any given time.
Polar, which makes everything from beer to corn flour, said production is at risk to due to currency restrictions and import limits. The Caracas-based company said its debt to foreign suppliers climbed 194 percent the past two years to $463 million.
Maduro said Jan. 15 that importers of food and medicine will continue to receive dollars at the preferential rate. Students going abroad and pensioners will also continue paying 6.3 bolivars for the dollar, Ramirez said yesterday.
“The dollar scarcity appears to be intensifying, and I’m not convinced the new measures will do anything to solve it,” said Nicholas Watson, a Bogota-based political risk analyst at consultancy Teneo Holdings. “They are just ad-hoc patches.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Anatoly Kurmanaev in Caracas atakurmanaev1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andre Soliani at asoliani@bloomberg.net



Venezuela Bonds Plunge After Bolivar Weakened For Travel - Bloomberg


Svaultazione indiretta da 6.3 a 11.36..... ed intanto al mercato nero arriva a 79!!!!

Nel paese con le maggiori riserve petrolifere al mondo... le riserve valutarie sono in declino anno dopo anno... in un solo anno sono passate da 28 a 20 mld di USD....

Maduro avrebbe fatto meglio a continuare a guidare i bus.

[Lukino81]

Stanno per riuscire in un'impresa, non era facile arrivare a questo risultato avendo tutto quel petrolio. Ennesima dimostrazione che le risorse naturali da sole non contano, è il fattore umano a fare la differenza, in positivo o in negativo come in questo caso

[ZZandro]

Sarebbero pure spassosi se non facessero morire di fame i propri sudditi.
Ok, il prezzo è giusto | Phastidio.net

[EURIDICE]

Venezuela Bonds Plunge After Bolivar Weakened For Travel

Venezuela devalued its currency for airline ticket purchases and foreign direct investment to halt a hemorrhaging of dollars that has pushed international reserves to a 10-year low. Bonds fell.....

.....

...indipendentemente dalle questioni economiche

l' ideale BOLIVARIANO ; l'unificazione del Sud America in un solo paese è un'idea straordinaria



(oltre che mostruosamente difficile)

[Amati75]

...indipendentemente dalle questioni economiche

l' ideale BOLIVARIANO ; l'unificazione del Sud America in un solo paese è un'idea straordinaria



(oltre che mostruosamente difficile)

E' un idea assurda.. per chiunque conosca i SudAmericani, sono molto meno omogenei di quello che si pensi al di fuori del continente.

[Amati75]

CVD

Venezuela Siphoning U.S. Oil Exports to China Sinks Bonds


Venezuela’s plummeting oil sales to the U.S., its biggest export market, are exacerbating a collapse in the nation’s debt securities.
Bonds issued by Venezuela sank 3 percent on Jan. 31, a day after data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed that 2013 energy sales to the country are headed for a 28-year low. The selloff pushed losses this year to 12.4 percent, more than three times the average 3.93 percent drop among notes from the least-creditworthy developing nations, according to data by Bloomberg.
The tumble in oil exports, Venezuela’s biggest source of dollars, comes as President Nicolas Maduro faces a shortage of U.S. currency that’s caused consumer prices to soar 56 percent and foreign reserves to plunge to a decade-low of $21 billion. Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state-run oil producer known as PDVSA, is sending hundreds of thousands of barrels a day to China to repay loans totaling more than $40 billion since 2008, at a time when its production is shrinking.


It’s an indictment of the mishandling of PDVSA,” Edwin Gutierrez, who manages $10 billion of emerging-market debt at Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, said in a telephone interview fromLondon. “The country’s capacity to pay continues to deteriorate.”

Gutierrez said he is underweight Venezuelan bonds.


Under Control’

Dollar shortages helped fuel a record 73 percent decline of the bolivar on the black market last year as the country, which imports about 70 percent of the goods it consumes, struggles to pay billions of dollars in debt to food importers and airlines. U.S. currency obligations to private companies have surged to more than $56 billion, according to Barclays Plc. The government failed to pay $8.7 billion to companies in 2013 that provide goods from grains to toilet paper, Caracas-based researcher Ecoanalitica estimated last month.
“There are no reasons to think that we have an unsustainable economy,” Oil Minister and President of PDVSA Rafael Ramirez said in an interview on the Televen television network on Feb. 2. “Oil revenues are under control. Venezuela has never not met its commitments. We’ve never stopped paying.”
Venezuelan exports of crude and petroleum products to the U.S. averaged 792,000 barrels a day in the first 11 months of last year, according to data published on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s website. That daily average over all of 2013 would result in the lowest rate since 1985.
Output Drops

Rising domestic demand, declining production at PDVSA and a boom in North America shale oil output are also deepening the drop in exports to the U.S. that began during the government of former President Hugo Chavez.
Production declined to 2.45 million barrels a day in December from a daily average of 2.9 million barrels reported in 2012, a Bloomberg survey showed. Crude rose 0.9 percent today to $97.34 a barrel as of 11:10 a.m. in New York.
Venezuela is exporting 640,000 barrels a day to China, Ramirez told reporters in Caracas on Nov. 27. About 310,000 barrels a day are used to pay back loans, he said at the time.
“From a financial point of view, for Venezuela, it’s not very smart,” Russell Dallen, the Miami-based head trader at Caracas Capital Markets, said in a telephone interview. “They obviously have to sell the oil at much cheaper rates because of the freight costs. But it was a political decision.”
Credit-default swaps, used to protect against bond losses stemming from non-payment, indicate a 65 percent chance that Venezuela will halt payments over the next five years, second only toArgentina, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
‘Strong Argument’

Francisco Rodriguez, senior Andean economist at Bank of America Corp., said investors should hold on to their Venezuelan bonds.
“Our bottom line on Venezuela long-term continues to be positive,” Rodriguez said in a Jan. 28 report. “The country has strong capacity to pay, is not depleting its assets, and will sooner or later get out of its fiscal mess by devaluing. Given that its yields are similar to those of countries with much more serious near-term capacity problems, there is a strong argument to hold its bonds.”
The extra yield investors demand to own Venezuelan dollar-denominated bonds instead of Treasuries has surged 2.85 percentage points this year to 12.87 percentage points, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That’s the highest among 56 developing nations included in the Bloomberg USD Emerging-Market Sovereign Bond Index (BEMS), apart from Argentina.
“Every day that goes by without a change in the policy mix gets us that much closer to that so-called day of reckoning,” Peter Lannigan, a managing director at broker-dealer CRT Capital Group LLC inStamford, Connecticut, said in a telephone interview. “In Venezuela, the theme in the market for a while now has been, ‘I don’t like the fundamentals, but they’ve got oil. I don’t like the economic policy mix, but they’ve got oil.’ It’s eventually going to catch up with them.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Boris Korby in New York at bkorby1@bloomberg.net; Corina Pons in Caracas at crpons@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Walsh at bwalsh8@bloomberg.net;Michael Tsang at mtsang1@bloomberg.net


Venezuela Siphoning U.S. Oil Exports to China Sinks Bonds - Bloomberg

[Amati75]

Ottimo articolo sullo stato attuale del VEnezuela, un paese potenzialmente ricchissimo, gestito da imbecilli (termine diverso e' realmente difficile da trovare):

Let's Watch Venezuela Destroy Itself

By Raul Gallegos Feb 14, 2014 9:21 AM ET 26 Comments Email Print

Venezuela, a country blessed by vast oil reserves, seems to have an uncanny knack for killing businesses.
At least three airlines have grounded flights to and from Venezuela so far this year, in part because the nation's government owed the carriers $3.3 billion in foreign exchange they need to pay operating costs. The governmentsuggested it could pay them with government bonds and cheap fuel, but precious little cash. This should do wonders for getting planes flying again.
Carmakers are also in trouble. Toyota Motor Corp. is halting production in Venezuela, while Ford Motor Co. is reducing output. A mere 722 vehicles were sold in a country of almost 29 million people last month. Trade group Cavenez reckons this amounts to an 87 percent drop in sales in one year.
Ford’s chief financial officer, Robert Shanks, understated the problem when he told Bloomberg last week that “price controls and a very limited and uneven supply of foreign currency to support production, have affected output adversely.” So adversely that Chrysler, Ford and General Motors produced no vehicles in Venezuela last month.
Business isn't much better for newspapers. In the last six months 12 papers have shut and more than a dozen might cease publication if the government doesn’t sell the newspapers enough foreign exchange to pay for imported paper. Things are so bad that newspaper VEA, a government mouthpiece, may soon go out of print. The hashtag #SinPapelNoHayPeriodico (WithoutPaperThereAreNoNewspapers) has become a rallying cry on Twitter among Venezuelans. It was telling that on Tuesday, hundreds of unionized newspaper workers -- including government supporters -- took to the streets to demand paper imports while chanting: “Say the truth, the country is broke.”
The next day, as many as 50,000 demonstrators marched in Caracas, angry at living in a country rich in natural resources where product shortages are the norm. Three people were killed during the protests.
The protesters have a point. The central bank’s foreign exchange reserves fell to a 10-year low last month. And Venezuelans eager to safeguard their money from annual inflation of 56 percent are evading capital controls to transfer as many dollars as they can overseas. President Nicolas Maduro likes to think of this as “an economic war,” but for people who earn a pay check locally, capital flight is basic common sense.
Maduro hit the panic button last month when he eliminated Cadivi, the foreign-currency administration office. But this only increased demand for dollars. A greenback in the black market now goes for 84.2 bolivars, or 13 times the official rate.
The main problem is corruption and mismanagement of the nation's oil revenue. Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela’s energy czar and vice president for the economy, got to the heart of the foreign exchange dilemma in a recent televised interview: “What was happening was that we saw how many dollars we had, but their utilization had no planning.” Ramirez said, “at least 30 percent of the dollars disbursed” by the government “were diverted from their original purpose.”
Ramirez’s comments caused so much turmoil that El Nacional newspaper columnist Alberto Barrera Tyszka rightly described them in his Sunday column as “probably the most shameless confession the government has made in recent times.”
The government’s rhetoric suggests that no one in the Maduro administration understands the difference between creating value and destroying it. At best, Venezuela's leftist leaders and backers simply say the government needs to be more efficient. Jordan Rodriguez, a reporter for the leftist television station TeleSUR, supported Maduro’s vow to nationalize more companies in a Monday column in the Correo del Orinoco newspaper: “Let’s do so, but taking into consideration that the only valid argument will be to be efficient.” After 15 years in power it should be clear that efficiency isn't in this government’s DNA.
Venezuela’s government has tried and been unable to replicate what companies do for the economy. Venirauto, Venezuela’s joint venture with Iran to make cars, assembled no more than 3,595 vehiclesin 2012, or less than 10 cars a day. That was a 14 percent drop from 2011, according to the latest data.
The natural response by Venezuela’s government to the failure of state planning is to demand more from private- sector pockets. When Polar, the country’s largest food producer, said last month that production could suffer if the government fails to sell the company the $463 million in foreign exchange it needs to pay its overseas raw material suppliers, the state-owned AVN news agencysuggested that Polar’s owner, Lorenzo Mendoza, personally assume his company’s debts. Mendoza “controls a personal fortune that amounts to $4 billion, according to Forbes,” the AVN article said.
When economic troubles mount, Venezuela’s government holds summits to discuss problems that are never really addressed. Last week’s “Maximum Socialist Efficiency” seminar for 120 state-owned enterprises, is one example. Ramirez, who gave the opening address, said on a Twitter post: “We must concentrate the productive forces of the State,” to achieve “the sustainable growth of the country.”
With the highest inflation on earth, rampant violence, declining oil output and a hobbled private sector, Venezuela seems instead to be on a sustainable path to economic ruin.

(Raul Gallegos is the Latin American correspondent for the World View blog. Follow him on Twitter @raulgallegos.)
To contact the author of this article: Raul Gallegos at rgallegos5@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this article: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net.


Let's Watch Venezuela Destroy Itself - Bloomberg