martes, 26 de mayo de 2015

GUYANA SE QUEDA CON LA BOCA DEL ORINOCO Y NO PASA NADA?

GUYANA SE QUEDA CON LA BOCA DEL ORINOCO Y NO PASA NADA?

ESTIMADOS AMIGOS, GUYANA DIO CONCESIONES EN EL AREA DE LA BOCA DEL ORINOCO, ES DECIR EL DELTA QUE ES GIGANNTE Y FALTA EL ESEQUIVO QUE ESTA MAS LEJOS, Y DIO CONSECIONES QUE NOS CIERRAN EL PASO AL ATLANTICO, Y AQUI NADIE DICE NI PIO, NI RECLAMA NADA, SON CONSECIONES PARA EXPLOTAR PETROLEO Q NO SABEMOS SI ES UNA EXTENSION DE LA FAJA O DEL CAMPO GIGANTESCO DE PETROLEO EN MONAGAS/ANZOATEGUI DEL FURRIAL, MUSIPAN, DE VENEZUELA, POR LO QUE SE HACE URGENTE Q SE TOMEN MEDIDAS PUES GUYANA LO QUE HIZO ES ASEGURAR SU SOBERANIA SOBRE EL MAR NUESTRO DE LA BOCA DEL ORINOCO. NI SIQUIERA ESTA EN  JUEGO EL ESEQUIVO, ESO ESTA MAS LEJOS, ELLOS ESTAN AHORA EN NUESTRO TERRITORIO MARITIMO, PROPIO, Y CON LOS LIMITES ACORDADOS DE VENEZUELA CON TRINIDAD NOS CIERRAN LA SALIDA AL ATLANTICO TOTALMENTE. 
EL DR ANIBAL MARTINEZ, ES EXPERTO EN ESTAS AREAS, TANTO DE PETROLEO COMO DE TERRITORIO  PROPIO DE VENEZUELA EN ESTA ZONA , CONSULTENLE Y VERAN Q ES PEOR LA SITUACION DE LO Q SE VE.  
EL PAIS SERIO RECLAMA AL GOB Q DEFIENDA NUESTRO TERRITORIO, SINO PASARAN A SER VENDEDORES DEL PAIS, TAL COMO HICIERON CON LA GOAJIRA HACE ANOS YA, Q TODA ERA NUESTRA, Y AHORA POR LA POBRE NEGOCIACION ES DE COLOMBIA, AL PAIS LO VAN SAQUEANDO DE TERRITORIOS Y DE DIVISAS, %, Q VAINA TAN ARRECHA ES ESTA PLAGA. SALUDOS, 
NESTOR G RAMIREZ
MIAMI, FLORIDA, USA,  15 DE MAYO 2015.

informe muy interesante sobre las reservas internacionales de Venezuela. info privado de latinvest Venezuela.


LATINVEST Venezuela Weekly Report
Page 2
But, the situation is worse than that. The
BCV calculated that it had $14.62 billion
in gold using a price of $1,257.80 per
ounce. (The BCV uses a trailing 9
month average; see BCV Footnote 3.3).
The silver lining in this growing disaster
is that the 9 month average has slipped
slightly since December 31, so that
Venezuela may have less gold and thus
more “other” in its till.
The IMF created SDRs as an international reserve asset
in 1969 to supplement all members’ reserves. Members
are allowed to count the SDRs as part of their reserves
and Venezuela is able to borrow those assets at an
extremely favorable rate of interest (currently 0.05%,
which frankly is much better than the over 30% that
Venezuela is paying on some of its bonds). In 2009 as
countries around the world were reeling from the
worldwide economic crisis, the IMF decided to provide
member nations a total of US$250 billion in SDRs to
shore up international liquidity. At that time, the IMF
gave Venezuela 2.543 billion SDRs, which works out to
about $3.578 billion in US dollars (The SDR value
floats against a basket of the US dollar, the yen, the
euro, and the pound, with 1 US dollar currently worth
0.710769 SDR). Thus, the 276.6 million in SDR chips
that Venezuela borrowed last month is worth
approximately US$385 million.
As chart 2 indicates, that leaves Venezuela with 1.982
billion SDRs which is approximately US$2.79 billion in
special drawing rights at today’s exchange rate.
(Rumors in financial circles began to swirl that
Venezuela was withdrawing more SDRs this month –
but we have been unable to confirm that and barring an
uncharacteristic revelation from Venezuela, we will
have to wait until the May IMF report to see if
Venezuela withdrew further funds). (Ed Note: You can
find out more about the IMF’s SDRs in the Latin
American Herald Tribune’s (LAHT) document library
here. And just to set the record straight, Venezuela,
while withdrawing the money generously provided for it
by the IMF, is still not on the best of terms with the
organization and has NOT submitted to what is known
as an Article IV consultation in over 9 years).
The remaining US$2.79 billion in SDRs is important
because Venezuela includes that as part of its reserves
total of $17.526 billion. Subtracting those remaining
SDRs from the reserves leaves Venezuela with
approximately $14.736 billion in reserves.
And here is why we start to get down to fumes. In its
Annual Financial Statement, Venezuela’s Central Bank
(BCV) reports that the value of the gold it was holding
on 31 December 2014 was $14.620 billion (You can see
the original BCV Footnote 7 – which is pictured
above – as well as all the rest of the BCV Financials
footnotes here).
So, if we just used the BCV’s 31 December 2014
gold calculations, Venezuela would have just $120
million possibly liquid in its reserves, outside of the
gold and SDRs.
But the situation is worse than that. The BCV
calculated that it had $14.62 billion in gold using a
price of $1,257.80 per ounce. (The BCV uses a
trailing 9 month average; see BCV Footnote 3.3).
The silver lining in this growing disaster is that the
9 month average has slipped slightly since
December 31, so that Venezuela may have less gold
and thus a couple hundred other million in its
reserves.
The bad news is that the price of gold has fallen.
Backing the figures out means that Venezuela has
approximately 11,624,019 ounces of gold. Gold has
slipped since last year and closed yesterday at
$1205.30, meaning that if Venezuela had to sell its
LATINVEST Venezuela Weekly Report Page 3
gold today, it would theoretically realize just $14.010 billion, $600 million less than its December valuation. The worse news is that some of Venezuela’s gold reserves may have already been mortgaged, so raising even that $14 billion may not be possible. Reports that Venezuela had completed a deal with some Wall Street banks where it borrowed against its gold have been circulating for the last few months (and years), although there has been no official confirmation (nor denial) from Venezuela nor any of the banks reportedly involved. A similar deal was done by Ecuador with Goldman Sachs in June of 2014 where President Correa acknowledged borrowing $600 million for 3 years against Ecuador’s gold holdings. But the worst news is that we do not know the exact make-up of the reserves. In an effort to shore up the floundering reserves in December of 2014, Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro issued a decree that “diamonds, other precious stones and metals” would also now be included in the country’s reserves, so Grandma’s silver may now be included (BCV note here).
Of course, the lack of transparency is not just a problem for figuring the real liquidity available, it is a problem for much of Venezuela’s economic numbers. By law, the Central Bank is required to provide the numbers for inflation in the first 10 days of every month. It has not done that all year.
In fact, the BCV has published neither total inflation nor GDP figures for 2014. Nor has Venezuela published scarcity of products figures in over a year under the maxim that it is better to be thought horrible than to open the books and prove it.
Sadly, the numbers are indeed horrible – we estimate that inflation is now running at 165%, best exemplified by the rocketing black market exchange rate. That rate went from 300 to over 400 in the span of the past week. On February 25, it took 200 bolivars to buy one dollar. Yesterday it took 423. The dollar doubled against the bolivar in just 3 months. It previously took 5-1/2 months for the dollar to double from 150 on November 28, 2014, to 300 on May 13. And before that, it took the dollar almost 11 months to double against the bolivar from 75 in January 2014 to that 150 in November 2014. The rate of decay in the currency and the resulting pass-on of inflation is gathering speed exponentially, as revealed by the increasingly parabolic nature of the currency graph below.
Two things are driving the increasingly rapid deterioration in the currency. One is the shortage of dollars brought on by the failure to increase oil production (and especially exports) and then the fall in oil prices; the country’s heavy dependence on imports for almost everything as Chavez’s policies gutted and then Maduro’s policies finished off most domestic production; and finally, Chavez’s doubling of the country’s foreign debt during the five years following the world economic crisis of 2008 to over $80 billion – often at usuriously high interest rates.
That debt is becoming a tremendous drag on the country’s resources and is increasingly responsible for much of the foreign reserve drain. As we outlined in “Venezuela: The Emperor Has No Clothes” in December in the Financial Times, Venezuela has over $11 billion in foreign debt payments this year, including a $5 billion bulge in October and November. This month alone, Venezuela and PDVSA had to pay $1.234 billion in interest. In April, Venezuela had to
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LATINVEST Venezuela Weekly Report
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pay $755.7 million. What is exceptionally worrying is that even though Venezuela completed ALL its May bond payments by the 17th, the reserves have continued to tumble. The next interest payment is June 1 for $35 million on the $1 billion of Venezuela 7% bonds of 2018, but fortunately June and July are comparatively light months. August ramps up to $750 million, however.
At the same time as the country is experiencing the increasing unavailability of dollars, the government is also repeatedly doubling the supply of bolivars circulating in the economy. As the chart above indicates, Venezuela M2 money supply is up 69% in 12 months to 2.34 trillion bolivars from 1.385 trillion bolivars in May of 2014. In 2008, M2 was just 147.64 billion, meaning that the amount of bolivars in circulation is 16 times what it was 7 years ago in 2008 when Venezuela’s oil basket hit a high of US$126.46 a barrel. In simple economic terms, Venezuela has too many bolivars chasing too few dollars.
A Long Hot Summer
The net effect of these problems is manifesting itself throughout Venezuela’s import dependent economy as shortages become rampant. Sadly, we outlined the beginnings of the shortages back in 2013 both before the Council of the Americas (we have the dubious distinction of being the first to point out the toilet-paper shortage in January 2013, video here) and in “Venezuelans Wake Up to Economic Realities” in the Financial Times in April 2013. Since then, things have only gotten steadily worse.
As Venezuela enters what promises to be a long, hot summer, citizens are being forced to wait for 4-6 hours in lines to purchase the few consumer staples that supermarkets may have. At the same time, their salaries are increasingly worth nothing as spiraling devaluation continues to decimate any bolivar earnings.
Venezuela’s minimum salary -- which the majority of the population live on -- will be raised to 7422 bolivars a month on July 1. At the black market rate of 400 bolivars to the dollar, that 7422 is just $18.56 a month, putting Venezuela below even Cuba in average wage. As a result,Venezuelans have no choice but to wait in line to get price-controlled food.
But even those making a relatively great salary of four times the minimum are still making less than $75 a month. At that wage, citizens can only buy what is for sale in Venezuela and travel outside of the country is essentially impossible – if you could find plane tickets, which are both very expensive and in short supply as airlines have drastically cut service to Venezuela because the government could not change increasingly worthless bolivars into dollars.
Add to the widespread shortages and economic deprivation the fact that there are now regular blackouts because of power shortages (electricity shortages so great that the government has had to cut the workday to now end at 1:30!) and homes and apartments are regularly going without water for days at a time because of municipal water shortages, and you have a recipe for civil strife over a long, hot, dirty summer.
Unlike the magical realism that allowed Hugo Chavez to create a reality distortion field in Venezuela for so long, Nicolas Maduro must be one of the few leaders to invent an economic war and go on to lose it.