Venezuela sets high-profile location for debt talks today

CARACAS: Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government has set a high-profile location near the presidential palace in Caracas for today’s hotly awaited meeting with investors to discuss renegotiating US$60bil in foreign debt.

The newly created debt renegotiation committee will meet with creditors at the government’s “White Palace” opposite the presidential building, Finance Minister Simon Zerpa said on Saturday.

Market sources had said Zerpa plus committee head and Venezuelan vice-president Tareck El Aissami, who are both on US sanctions lists for corruption and drug-trafficking accusations respectively, would sit out the meeting to allay any fears about legal repercussions for anyone meeting them.

But Zerpa’s exhortation to attend, plus the location of the meeting right opposite the Miraflores presidential palace, appear to indicate the meeting will not be a low-profile affair. “Once again, we invite investors to register their participation in this meeting,” Zerpa, who is also the finance boss of state oil company PDVSA, said in a Tweet.

A PDVSA source said both he and El Aissami would be present, but there was no official confirmation.

Maduro’s move a week ago to summon bondholders for talks about “restructuring” and “refinancing” roughly US$60bil in bonds has spooked markets worried Venezuela may be heading for default amid US financial sanctions.

Measures by US president Donald Trump’s administration against the Maduro government, which it accuses of being a “dictatorship” that has impoverished Venezuela’s 30 million people through corruption and incompetence, effectively bar US banks from rolling over the country’s debt into new bonds.

Venezuela did, however, appear to be honouring its most recent debt payment, US$1.2bil due on a bond from PDVSA.