"Venezuela is in the middle of economic collapse"
"There is a highly fragmented government with many groups struggling for power and many vested interests" "A two-digit fall could be recorded in the manufacture and construction sectors this year"
VÍCTOR SALMERÓN | EL UNIVERSAL
Wednesday June 11, 2014 10:27 AM
Investment banks have forecast that president Nicolás Maduro would implement an adjustment plan including forex rate unification, rise in the price of gasoline, monetary discipline, and tax reform. However, Alejandro Grisanti, analyst at Barclay's Capital, says that the current events point in the opposite direction.
"There has been no progress towards such measures. At the end of April, public expenditure jumped by 20% in real terms. In the monetary area, between late March and early April, the central bank provided VEB 75 billion (USD 11.9 billion) in funding to (state-run oil company) Pdvsa. No forex rate unification can be put in place because nobody is expecting the foreign currency control to end; therefore, the parallel forex market will continue to exist," explains Grisanti.
- Indicators show industrial production is falling. Do you think recession is inevitable?
- Venezuela is in the middle of economic collapse. A two-digit fall could be recorded this year in the manufacture and construction sectors -the main employers in the country and whose growth or slowdown has a significant weight on the purchasing power."
- When did this economic collapse begin?
- It started on the first trimester of the year, and I do not see any rebound in the second quarter. The production chain has been broken and keeps breaking. If companies have dollars for packaging, they do not have enough for spare parts. Rebuilding the production chain can be very expensive, and could take longer than the government thinks.
- Apart from the forex deficit the economy is going through, do you think there is another cause for recession?
- The lack of decision-making. Some decisions have been made, but in the end they are not implemented. And there is a highly fragmented government with many groups struggling for power and many vested interests that are clearly separated from Venezuela's reality.
Grisanti further explains that "this government is more difficult to predict than that of (late president) Hugo Chávez. Under Chávez, excesses were cut during non-electoral periods. We do not see that under Maduro. This was clearly a non-electoral year, a year for decision-making in order to restitute balance, and they are not doing it."
"We are 18 months ahead of parliamentary elections in the middle of an extremely uncertain situation. I would think that the measures that are not implemented in the short term will not be taken in September when students are back to school. We have four critical months for decision-making ahead."
- From your point of view, will the government resort to indebtedness in order to obtain foreign currency for alleviating the dollar deficit?
- The current legal structure offers strong incentives to indebtedness in foreign currency. If you prevent Pdvsa from selling dollars from oil exports in the Sicad II (Second Ancillary Foreign Currency Administration System) at VEB 50 per dollar, but allow it to sell dollars obtained from financing, there are evidently incentives. In the last six months, Pdvsa has issued USD 9.5 billion in debt bonds.
- Won't the concentration of debt payment during the year's last trimester force the government to issue debt bonds in order to meet such obligations?
- Between October and November, there is a high concentration of payments of sovereign debt and Pdvsa debt, whose debt services amount to USD 7 billion. Therefore, they are likely to end up issuing debt bonds.
- The government's discourse is that the size of the debt is no problem. What do you think about that?
- The debt growth is alarming because it has occurred amid exorbitant oil prices. The debt service to oil exports ratio has jumped from 7% in 2007-2008 to almost 25% this year.
Grisant added that "the country can be managed under this debt service to oil exports ratio, but this may lead to higher volatility and vulnerability if oil prices fall. This year, the debt service stands at USD 15 billion."