The acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, clarified that her government has no plans to apply for loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “No debt program is planned,” she said on Friday, April 17, regarding the reinstatement of Venezuela within the IMF. She explained that the reinstatement will allow Venezuela to recover assets frozen there—resources that will be invested to strengthen public services and social programs for the people.
Speaking at the National Center for Social Action through Music, in the School of Engineers in Caracas, where she participated in an event commemorating National Cuatro Day, she pointed out that the resumption of relations with the IMF will allow Venezuela to regain its rights to frozen assets held in that institution.
“The recovery of our representation before this international organization is very important,” she said. “It is a victory for Venezuelan diplomacy because we are recovering not only the rights that we have within the organization, but also the frozen assets that our country has there.”
She noted that the recovery of these assets will help in the “immediate investment in public services [and] recovery of the National Electric System, which is so important and has been hit by sanctions. It will also allow for the recovery of the water supply system.”
“Basic services will be addressed immediately with these resources that were blocked at the IMF. We will also give priority to the country’s hospitals and programs related to the welfare of our people,” she emphasized, adding that the Venezuelan Orchestra System will be included in those financing plans.
Regarding the IMF, she added that the Venezuelan government “has regained its rights in the International Monetary Fund, and we are part of the international economic and financial statistical system, which allows us to share relevant information to consolidate our economy.” Rodríguez also noted that the resumption of negotiations with the IMF will allow the country to strengthen “our international reserves and better balance our macroeconomic indicators.”
It should be noted that Venezuela never exited the IMF; rather, it was the IMF that suspended Venezuela. In 2019, the IMF refused to recognize Venezuela’s constitutional government and stripped the country of its Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a system created by the IMF in 1969 to provide liquidity to global economies and to offer additional reserves to member states in situations of hardship. The suspension of Venezuela by the IMF was repeatedly criticized by the constitutional president of the country, Nicolás Maduro.
For example, on February 28, 2022, during his speech at the 49th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, when the world was going through the COVID-19 pandemic, President Maduro decried that the IMF, “due to pressure from the US government, refuses to give Venezuela $5 billion in SDRs, to which we are entitled by right, to fight the pandemic and for the rights of the people.”
On Thursday, April 16, Delcy Rodríguez repudiated the far right for attempting to sabotage the resumption of relations between Venezuela and the IMF. She made the remarks during the promulgation of the Organic Law of Mines, unanimously approved by the National Assembly on April 9.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
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