Caracas (AFP) – Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez said Tuesday that her country has received $300 million from a US sale of Venezuelan crude, and she will use it to prop up her country’s battered currency, the bolivar. Rodriguez stated that the sum from a $500 million sale conducted by Washington would be used to “stabilize” the foreign exchange market “to protect the income and purchasing power of our workers.”
Washington last weekend said US President Donald Trump brokered a “historic energy deal” that would “benefit the American and Venezuelan people.” Trump mentioned that the oil could be sold at market price and that proceeds would be “controlled by me, as President of the United States of America.”
Foreign exchange has been vital to the Venezuelan economy since 2018, when the bolivar became virtually worthless and the dollar emerged as the country’s de facto currency. The dollar has since coexisted with the bolivar, but a scarcity of greenbacks, caused by a six-year-old US embargo on Venezuelan oil, has resulted in its value soaring.
By intervening in the currency market, the government aims to gradually reduce the gap between the official dollar rate and the black market rate, according to the Ecoanalitica firm. Before the US capture of longtime leader Nicolas Maduro in a bombing raid on Caracas on January 3, Venezuela had been forced to offer huge discounts on its crude to circumvent the US oil embargo.
China was the biggest customer for Venezuelan crude. Washington began clamping down on those sales in December by seizing tankers carrying sanctioned Venezuelan crude.
© 2024 AFP
