By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Jan 3 1996 (IPS)

When the Venezuelan Petroleum (PDVSA) State monopoly reaches its 20th birthday since nationalisation on Jan. 1, 1996, it will offer shares to Venezuelan nationals in order to raise five billion dollars in ten years.

The Petroleum Investments Fund (FIP) plan has been on the cards for some time, but has only recently been approved, and will go into action on Jan. 22, just as the transnationals are being readmitted to the oil scene in Venezuela.

The FIP will provide a sort of “public shareholding” which will link savers to the mainstay of the Venezuelan economy, without reaching the point of the “public capitalism” proclaimed by former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who claimed to be handing over state shares to the public.

Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera referred to the FIP in his new year message to the nation, and the motion only needs Senate approval of the Collective Investment and Safety Deposit laws to go ahead.

The authorities are expecting income of 500 million dollars per year to cover the cost of 10 percent of the PDVSA development budget over the next ten years, and the stock market is eagerly awaiting.

In a nation with few investment options, most of which are short term, the profitability of these share offers “is guaranteed,” according to stockbrokers.

The FIP will offer both fixed and variable interest bonds, supported by shares in particular PDVSA projects, as they have only previously done with some private investors in the liberalisation process of the nineties.

Caldera said the FIP “will be a real step forward in the democratisation of capital in the hydrocarbon sector,” though the property and planning control will remain in PDVSA hands, as they have done since its privatisation in 1976.

The shares will be low-cost to make them accessible “to all levels of national savers,” according to the government Central Information Centre (OCI), which insisted that the benefits should reach “all society, including the less privileged.”

Shares can be bought in the associations formed with transnationals to exploit the bitumen deposits of the Orinoco belt, including the coal, petrochemical, gas or synthetic orimulsion fuel projects.

The bonds will not be guaranteed by the PDVSA but only by the individual projects, though the company closed 1995 the second largest petroleum concern in the world after the Saudi Aramco.

According to the OIT, one of the main targets of the FIP will be workers pension, savings and social security funds, which could benefit from broadening their portfolios and making good profits.

The FIP will also help combat the excess liquidity in the economy, which has contributed to inflation rates of 57 percent in 1995, and 70.8 percent the previous year.

It will also support government attempts to channel common Venezuelan savings into investment. National savings are low, at 11 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared with 16 percent in the other Latin American nations and 28 percent in Southeast Asia.

In 1995, the Monetary Stabilisation Bonds attempted to mop up the access liquidity, but their rapid returns cost the government the equivalent of one billion dollars.

Excerpt:

By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Jan 3 1996 (IPS)

When the Venezuelan Petroleum (PDVSA) State monopoly reaches its 20th birthday since nationalisation on Jan. 1, 1996, it will offer shares to Venezuelan nationals in order to raise five billion dollars in ten years.

The Petroleum Investments Fund (FIP) plan has been on the cards for some time, but has only recently been approved, and will go into action on Jan. 22, just as the transnationals are being readmitted to the oil scene in Venezuela.

The FIP will provide a sort of “public shareholding” which will link savers to the mainstay of the Venezuelan economy, without reaching the point of the “public capitalism” proclaimed by former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who claimed to be handing over state shares to the public.

Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera referred to the FIP in his new year message to the nation, and the motion only needs Senate approval of the Collective Investment and Safety Deposit laws to go ahead.

The authorities are expecting income of 500 million dollars per year to cover the cost of 10 percent of the PDVSA development budget over the next ten years, and the stock market is eagerly awaiting.

In a nation with few investment options, most of which are short term, the profitability of these share offers “is guaranteed,” according to stockbrokers.

The FIP will offer both fixed and variable interest bonds, supported by shares in particular PDVSA projects, as they have only previously done with some private investors in the liberalisation process of the nineties.

Caldera said the FIP “will be a real step forward in the democratisation of capital in the hydrocarbon sector,” though the property and planning control will remain in PDVSA hands, as they have done since its privatisation in 1976.

The shares will be low-cost to make them accessible “to all levels of national savers,” according to the government Central Information Centre (OCI), which insisted that the benefits should reach “all society, including the less privileged.”

Shares can be bought in the associations formed with transnationals to exploit the bitumen deposits of the Orinoco belt, including the coal, petrochemical, gas or synthetic orimulsion fuel projects.

The bonds will not be guaranteed by the PDVSA but only by the individual projects, though the company closed 1995 the second largest petroleum concern in the world after the Saudi Aramco.

According to the OIT, one of the main targets of the FIP will be workers pension, savings and social security funds, which could benefit from broadening their portfolios and making good profits.

The FIP will also help combat the excess liquidity in the economy, which has contributed to inflation rates of 57 percent in 1995, and 70.8 percent the previous year.

It will also support government attempts to channel common Venezuelan savings into investment. National savings are low, at 11 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared with 16 percent in the other Latin American nations and 28 percent in Southeast Asia.

In 1995, the Monetary Stabilisation Bonds attempted to mop up the access liquidity, but their rapid returns cost the government the equivalent of one billion dollars.

Excerpt: