Briefing

The New PDVSA

A leaked document announces radical changes in the company; Coronavirus figures keep rising along with another host of problems.

Naky Soto

Photo: Forbes

  • Asdrúbal Chávez, Chávez’s cousin and PDVSA’s president, leads the proposal to restructure the company. According to a leaked document, it’s bye-bye socialism: more private capital for the oil industry and a focus on producing, eliminating subsidies for fuel in the local market and arbitrarily modifying articles of the Hydrocarbons Law. 
  • Nicolás assured us on Tuesday that no new cases of COVID-19 have been registered in the country in the last 24 hours (the official figure remains, 329). He insisted on “relaxing” the quarantine starting next weekend and repeated the “relative normality” concept, because prudent measures will reign. He talked about people who have returned, as if it were an important percentage of 5 million Venezuelan migrants and mocked the decision of fleeing to survive: “They’re going through hardship that would have never happened in Venezuela.” He asked the opposition to reach a humanitarian agreement to alleviate the effects of coronavirus and favor medical work: “let’s work towards a cease-fire.” He added that the humanitarian aid from the U.S. hasn’t arrived and referred to the people he allegedly wants to work with as “liars and thieves.” He ordered the U.S. (!) to help Venezuela through the WHO or the PAHO, it really wants to. 
  • The National Assembly declared the illegal extraction of minerals in Amazonas, Bolívar and Delta Amacuro states as “blood gold.” The agreement approved by the AN prohibits selling, exporting and circulating illegally extracted gold from the aforementioned states. They also debated about hunger, public services and the gas shortage, and discussed the drug trafficking mafias and terrorists operating in the country. They approved an agreement rejecting the Supreme Tribunal of Justice’s Constitutional Chamber sentence ratifying Reinaldo Muñoz as the attorney general, reminding everyone that no sentence from that chamber is valid after December, 25th, 2015. They also rejected the Education Ministry’s decision to end the 2019-2020 school year with remote activities.
  • Venezuela is the country with the lowest economic freedom in the world. In Fraser’s  Index of Economic Freedom 2019, we got the last spot. 
  • The coronavirus pandemic will bring an increase of hunger and poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. 
  • There are 3,094,829 cases of coronavirus and 216,160 deaths in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has reached a million cases, one third of the world’s total. Chile and Colombia registered the largest increase in cases in just one day, 14,365 and 5,949 cases respectively. Sadly, there was a new record of deaths in Brazil yesterday: 474 (that’s 5,017 deaths in total).
Briefing

Naky Soto

Naky gets called Naibet at home and at the bank. She coordinates training programs for an NGO. She collects moments and turns them into words. She has more stories than freckles.

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