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International Reserves
The BCV's international reserves measure the country's capacity to sustain imports and external payments; their level is a key indicator of Venezuela's macroeconomic solvency.
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40Venezuela's election clock starts with a vacancy Washington places after a new TSJ and a new CNE
The State Department published on Monday the order it expects: the Supreme Court first, then an electoral council with no power to bar candidates and, last, the vacancy that opens the election. Caracas has not confirmed it.
Machado returns to Caracas with no public guarantees from the government and outside the dialogue table
Until Saturday, the opposition leader was trying to return from Panama; since Sunday she is in Caracas, with a travel ban and a disqualification that, by reported accounts, remain in force, and outside a table that put off electoral council reform.
From 132,000 to 44,000: SENIAT cuts the list of special taxpayers that withhold VAT
Those who leave the list stop withholding the tax from their suppliers and file it once a month, not every two weeks. Fiscal printers, meanwhile, stopped being mandatory on Wednesday.
What comes first for Citgo: the Third Circuit ruling or the OFAC license Amber needs?
The judges heard Venezuela, PDVSA and Gold Reserve on Wednesday without setting a date to rule, and the $5.9 billion bid remains approved in the meantime.
Over wages of $5 a week, PDVSA workers idle boats on Lake Maracaibo
The crews that serve PDVSA on the lake, on wages their union puts at five dollars a week, joined the retirees' protests on Monday in the basin where the company wants 400,000 barrels a day before December.
The World Bank's first loan to Venezuela since 2005 waits on the country paying its overdue debt to the IDB and CAF
Venezuela has not received a World Bank loan since 2005; the bank now has a portfolio, an amount and a first operation for water and electricity, and the next step is the country's: catching up with the other multilateral lenders.
Venezuelan crude halves its discount to Brent in two months
In July, the Venezuelan benchmark sold $16.61 below Brent; in September, $8.27. With output nearly flat, the month's gain came from price.
Calixto Ortega takes the IMF a plan for the bolívar to cover every domestic transaction in Venezuela
Before the Fund, the vice president for the economy ruled out dollarization. The plan published by the central bank leaves the dollar to foreign trade and sets two-digit inflation as the condition, with no date to reach it.
Pacific Coast Energy promises to double crude output at two PDVSA blocks claimed by former partners
On July 30 the company said it was finalizing the contracts; on October 7 it confirmed it runs both blocks with full operational control. Its release mentions no OFAC license and none of the partners claiming the fields.
Domestic market first, LNG later: the order of Baker Hughes' gas alliance with PDVSA
The official note on Friday the 2nd's meeting with the acting president mentioned no signing; on Monday the 5th, Baker Hughes announced a framework signed with PDVSA and two US partners. Each project will need its own definitive agreement and an OFAC authorization.
Who in Caracas sets the date for the elections Delcy Rodríguez promised at the UN?
The person exercising the presidency as acting head, under a precautionary order that never set how long it lasts, told the General Assembly on Wednesday there will be elections. The promise arrived the same way the office it was made from did: with no day on the calendar.
Heeney Capital takes El Callao's gold in Guayana with a concession
In May, the same parties signed a memorandum of understanding over that district; on Wednesday, in Houston, they signed the concession. Between one instrument and the other lies a difference of legal category, and it decides whether a right can be enforced.
Venezuelan crude reaches the United States at a record pace and Washington will not say what the Treasury holds
Last week it was 782,000 barrels a day, the largest volume of the year. What those cargoes pay is held in custody by Washington, and on Tuesday the man who holds it appeared before Congress without giving the balance.
BCV scraps the commercial credit ceiling and makes 16% the floor for bolivar loans
The repealed resolution set a band: no more than 16% a year, no less than 13%. The one in force since Tuesday deletes the ceiling and leaves that same 16% as the minimum. The bank's press note announced what it will pay on deposits; what borrowing will cost sits in the official gazette.
OFAC's GL 52C lets a sanctioned official sign for PDVSA
Until last night, a sanctioned officer signing was enough to make the transaction prohibited, and the contract stalled in its last box. The same document closes the door on the Citgo structure in Delaware, by name.
Chevron will pay for Carabobo out of its joint ventures' cash, declaring a total cost under $20 a barrel
The September 2 release said how much it would invest and over what period. What Mike Wirth added on Friday says where the money comes from — whatever cash the three operating joint ventures generate, with none brought in from outside.
Selling Venezuelan coal without sanctions risk now means paying into an account the Treasury names
The mining licenses spoke of minerals and gold and named a single company, Minerven. The three issued on Wednesday add coal and Carbones del Zulia, the state firm that mines it in the Guasare basin in the country's west.
Venezuela's second-quarter growth was led by banking, not by manufacturing
The Central Bank certifies 7.14% expansion and breaks it down: financial activities 26.26%, construction 16.11%. Manufacturing, measured by its own trade group, advanced 6.5% with nearly half its plant unlit.
The IMF's first visit to Caracas in twenty years starts with the books, not with credit
A country whose books no one has reviewed since 2004 cannot receive structured funding; that the Fund starts with method and statistics says what is missing before any program exists.
No extension: on Tuesday each oil company decides whether the new fiscal regime pencils out
With the deadline firm, migrating turns from paperwork into arithmetic: at 20% to 35% by field type, each operator decides whether the return holds or keeps its rights without the fiscal benefit.
A multinational pays US$30 million for a Venezuelan factory, not for a promise of recovery
For the first time since the turn, a strategic buyer is paying for installed capacity and market in Venezuela, not for the right to develop them.
Refiners are buying crude straight from PDVSA again, cutting the trading houses out
Venezuela is selling its crude to the end buyer again instead of the intermediary — the most concrete measure of how far the risk of dealing with PDVSA has fallen.
Money is already betting on Venezuela's recovery before the real economy feels it
In Venezuela, private capital, the bond market and exchange-rate policy are all positioning on a recovery that hasn't happened yet: they value what they expect, not what exists.
The $346 million Venezuela drew from the IMF was the last money within reach that carried no conditions
The three money channels opened to Venezuela came with three different levels of oversight, and the one with the least is the one flowing straight into state accounts.
Physical dollars return to Venezuelan banks in a week of doubts over the U.S. role
This week, the most concrete channel between Venezuela and Washington was a shipment of cash dollars; the most uncertain, an intelligence memo and a tutelage plan nobody has confirmed.
A war that isn't its own lifts Venezuela's crude just when it most needs cash
A foreign war puts a premium on Venezuelan oil just as the country goes out to raise capital to rebuild; its inflation, which doubled in June, warns that the relief is the State's cash box, not the citizen's pocket.
Venezuela has decreed the opening of its entire oil chain; the fiscal fine print and control of the money are missing
Venezuela decreed an opening that unlocks the whole chain but leaves the reservoir in the State's hands; what it does not settle is the fiscal fine print or control of the money: crude under Treasury custody and gold in London.
The missing regulation: Venezuela completes the framework of its oil opening, 20 days before the deadline
Venezuela reworks the rules of its oil and its exchange rate to attract capital, while the United States' footprint inside the country turns physical: from the crude income under Treasury custody to the Marines in Maiquetía's control tower.
Venezuela's post-quake reconstruction rests on a government that today loses its constitutional footing
Venezuela's recovery does not falter over cost but over its footing: the response to the victims and the reconstruction lean on a government whose constitutional basis, jurists say, expires today.
The earthquake tested the variable Venezuela's opening overlooked: the state's own capacity
The earthquake did not create Venezuela's fragility: it exposed the variable the opening was not charging for —the state's physical and fiscal capacity to sustain what it rebuilds— just as the largest debt renegotiation in its history opens.
Venezuela posts its best oil quarter in years, and the bond market answers by falling
The oil rebound now has numbers behind it, but the market that would finance the country answered by selling: without knowing how much of its debt it will pay or under what rules, the recovery is a figure, not yet an investment thesis.
Dinorah Figuera returns from exile, with Washington's backing, to negotiate who runs the vote with chavismo
Washington's tutelage over Venezuela's opening is no longer only economic: it now also sets the political arbiter of the transition, just as the barrel that funds it gets cheaper.
Venezuela opens the week on three fronts: Brazil at the table, a fight over its debt, and the U.S. in its gold mines
Last week the opening produced signatures; now it measures who governs it: whether the table with Brazil leaves deals, whether the debt is awarded on a process not by hand, and under what architecture —with the U.S. inside— the gold flows.
Shell signs Phase I of the Loran field and the debt restructuring already has a draft price
The new permit regime is already producing contracts in gas, debt and agriculture; what it does not yet produce is what would sustain them: a stable barrel, reserves that hold, and a standing judicial arbiter.
Washington rewrites the rules of Venezuela's oil and gold into a single framework, with an explicit veto on Chinese capital
The opening is no longer a collection of permits but a regime: wider than ever, administered in Washington and revocable with a single signature.
Venezuela's State seizes Bolívar's gold by force, 672 MW of idle hydropower restart under a U.S. license, and the bolívar holds on reserves
The record barrel funds Venezuela's recovery but buys no structure: the State reorders the gold rent by force, the power grid restarts only with a U.S. license, and the bolívar holds by spending reserves. Volume flows; the rest is the pending test.
The U.S. blockades Venezuela's sanctioned crude by sea and presses on its oil law, as a Middle East truce cheapens the barrel
Washington controls all four levers of Venezuela's oil revenue —cash, rules, route and now the price— so its record export volume decides less and less.
Venezuela widens its economic opening on several fronts as inflation falls to 6.3%, a 19-month low
The week opens with Venezuela widening its economic opening —contracts, the power grid and non-oil exports—; the question is how much is structure and how much still depends on the Executive's permits.
The State prepares to offer its assets through the Caracas Stock Exchange as global investment banks and the IMF move closer to Venezuela
The institutional capital and the mechanism to sell it state assets advance fast; the judicial arbiter that would give those contracts certainty is being recomposed this week with no guarantees of independence.
The top U.S. military officer lands in Caracas to back the transition, a Nasdaq SPAC lines up US$2.25 billion and the PDVSA-Crypto trial stays stuck
Venezuela's transition gains its strongest guarantee —the highest-ranking U.S. soldier in Caracas— and draws capital, but the money answering is still speculative and the institutions that should sustain it still do not work.
Sector Briefs
04Venezuela macro August 2026: the slide moderates and the accounts remain unaudited
The official rate rose 19.84% in July, but in August the slide eases to 5.09%. The central bank reported 7.14% growth in the second quarter and the Fund projects 4% for the year: nothing available today arbitrates between the two figures.
Venezuela banking and bonds August 2026: banks grow 26% without lending and the collateral stays frozen
The short, successive extensions of the collateral signal a live negotiation whose calendar governs the contractual maturity. Financial activity grew 26.26% in the second quarter with private credit blocked by a 73% reserve requirement.
Venezuela Upstream July 2026: LOH Regulation drops PDVSA (Gaceta 7,052), Repsol signs Horcón MoU, OFAC amends GL 46C-54A, Brent normalizes to $81
The first comprehensive Hydrocarbons Law regulation since 1943 opens upstream to privates without a mandatory joint venture; the VE Score eases from 94 to 84 on Brent's correction (May $104 → July $81), not regulatory deterioration.
The bi-monetary economy grows double digits while the bolivar loses a quarter of its value
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