Aquí algunos extractos de la entrevista con el Financial Times (en ingles)*:
Venezuela finance minister Rodolfo Marco Torres on charm offensive - FT.com
Since loosening currency controls last week,
yields on Venezuelan bonds have dropped sharply, cutting financing
costs by as much as two percentage points, as investors have bet the new
system, called Sicad 2, will shrink a gaping budget deficit, revive an
economy headed for recession and protect foreign reserves – so leaving
more funds to pay them.
“Our debt yields have fallen, and we can
get them down much more,” Rodolfo Marco Torres told the Financial Times
in a rare interview by a Venezuelan finance minister. “We have always
paid our debts, we always will. We are a responsible country.”[Nb:Si, sobre todo!!!]
“Responsible”
is not a word often used when describing Venezuela’s economy. Despite
the world’s largest energy reserves, the country has suffered falling
oil production, 57 per cent inflation and shortages of goods that have
many left shop shelves empty.
“Sicad 2 is a beginning. You cannot block out the
sun with a single finger,” he says, declining to elaborate on what other
measures may come. “We want to boost the Venezuelan economy, to
strengthen it, to boost productivity.”
The currency reform is the
government’s first piece of pragmatic economic policy making since
Nicolás Maduro (below) won the election a year ago to succeed Hugo
Chávez as president.
....
Mr...
Torres, who has a reputation as a pragmatist, believes the
market-determined Sicad 2 rate will reduce inflation as it will be used
as a pricing point by importers, rather than the higher black market
rate. Sicad 2 closed on Friday at 51 bolívars to the dollar, versus the
88 rate that the black market peaked at in February. The country’s
official rate of 6.3 is still used for most imports.
Indeed
Mr Torres is so resolutely upbeat that the only question that produces a
frown is if Sicad 2 is a tacit devaluation. This has been a
time-honoured way for oil-exporting Venezuela to boost local revenues,
but it is also a word the government is loath to use for political
reasons.
“A devaluation? Not at all, because all the social
sectors will continue to be protected at the official rate. That is
something we will never abandon,” he says.
Mr Torres dodges the
issue of how multiple exchange rate regimes have failed in Latin America
in the past. “I am here, aren’t I?” he says, offering his presence, the
first time a finance minister of Venezuela has attended the IADB in
eight years, as proof of a newfound pragmatism.
* - Utilice la herramienta de traducción de Google ubicada en la parte superior de la pagina.
Lea el articulo completo aquí: Venezuela finance minister Rodolfo Marco Torres on charm offensive - FT.com
